The console is now $340. https://www.gamingconviction.com/intellivision-amico-receives-price-increase/

I don't doubt it.  But, 2 out of the 3 companies you mentioned came out with finished products.  And one of them, Atari, I think accomplished all they set out to do.  I don't think Atari ever expected to set the world on fire with their device or be a "market disruptor", especially after they started pushing the VCS as a "streaming device"/mini PC instead of a console.  Meanwhile, Intellivision Entertainment has shown a special kind of incompetence at every level.  Compare:

VCS
June 2017 - First announcement (as Ataribox)
May 2018 - Crowdfunding starts ($3,058,123 by 11,597 backers, average of $264/backer)
2nd Quarter 2019 - Initial Planned Release(delayed)
March 2020 - Planned Release (delayed)
May 2020 - VCS Consoles assembled and ready to ship from factory
December 14, 2020 - VCS Consoles shipped to backers
June 2021 - VCS General Release

Amico
May 2018 - Initial announcement (as relaunch of Intellivision)
April 2020 - Preorders start with additional funding on crowdfunding site Fig/Republic ($7,107,685 from 13,026 preorders, average of $546/backer)
September 2020 - Bavarian Grant Money (78,768 euros) received for funding 2 Amico games (Snafoo & Biplanes)
October 10, 2020 - Initial Planned Release Date (delayed)
April 3, 2021 - Planned Release (delayed)
September 2021 - Additional crowdfunding round on Fundable
October 10, 2021 - Planned Release (delayed)
October 11, 2021 - Boxed Amico Games (8) go on sale as RFID cards with trinkets, despite Amico console still not released.
End of 2021 - Planned Release (delayed)
February 2022 - Additional crowdfunding attempted on StartEngine (campaign closed within 3 weeks after only $58,001 raised)
April 8, 2022 - Intellivision Amico Gamestop Preorders Cancelled, and all references to Amico removed from Gamestop website
End of 2022 - Planned Release (?)

So, while raising less than half of what Intellivision Entertainment took in from Pre-Orders, Investors, and foreign grants, Atari managed to get its hardware into the hands of its backers within 3.5 years of announcement, and within 2.5 years of taking any crowdfunded money (from only 1 round of crowdfunding).  Meanwhile, we are now 4 years past Intellivision Entertainment's initial announcement, and 2 years beyond where they started taking money, and not 1 console preorder has shipped.  I find it hard to blame all the Amico delays on Covid-19, when the VCS was assembled and shipped during the lockdowns and supply chain disruptions of 2020, which was the exact target release date of the Amico. 

If the Amico wasn't already ready to be assembled then, it was never going to be ready to be assembled even if Covid-19 and the supply chain disruption had never happened.  Just look at the pack-in games.  Snafoo was originally supposed to be one of the games that would come pre-installed on the system.  IE didn't even get the Bavarian Grant money needed to fund the games development until September 2020.  One month before the console was supposed to be shipped?  It's no wonder that got removed from the Amico pack-in list.  Cornhole, on the other hand, remained listed as a pack-in.  But in July of 2021, IE revealed that they were completely retooling Cornhole, because the mechanic for playing on the Amico controller "wasn't fun".  So, another game that was supposed to be pre-installed on the console in October 2020, but the software still wasn't even done in July of 2021.

Just to be clear, I'm not an Atari VCS backer/supporter or owner.  Atari didn't handle their campaign all that well either, with frequent droughts of information updates to their backers in between delays.  But the fact remains that they still got a finished product into the hands of their backers and into retailer outlets.  Intellivision Entertainment, on the other hand, has managed to take in and squander several millions more while running a dumpster fire of a project with still nothing to show for it.  They didn't even spell the name of their own company right on the "Quick Start Guide" they showed that is supposed to come in the console's box.

Yikes, I had forgotten about that.  CEO Phil Adam also said the price of the games would be going up 50-100% above the originally promised cap of $9.99 max.  So, even if it came out now, it would cost more than an XBox Series S with mobile quality games that cost around $20 each to download.  No wonder Gamestop delisted it from their site.

If the console industry is dominated by 3 companies and little chance for others to break into then is it really a competition? More like the competition is bleak. We're seeing this everywhere these days, where like 1 to 3 companies control an entire industry and people think that's "good competition" or good for the average consumer. It's not. It's a shame that even if a big name like Sega wanted to enter the console space it'd be incredibly difficult.

It is just about as competitive as the current model and market size allows since there tends to be a limit on how many major  players a market can sustain, in the console space the player base and history suggests 3 is about the maximum, and we all know from looking back at Sony and MS's entries into the space the enormous investment from a work/expense and time perspective needed to finally reach consistent profitability and then you look at the present day where console gaming has become all about ecosystems filled with 250 million or so gamers most who find themselves heavily invested in a particular platform through financial historical and emotional connections built up over the years or most likely all of the above means that it has become even harder.

It's always been the case in the video game industry though.  The consumer has always had a choice, and the least successful offerings die off.

2nd Generation 
Atari
Mattell
Coleco
Magnavox

3rd Generation
Nintendo 
Sega
Atari

4th Generation
Nintendo
Sega
NEC/Hudson Soft
Phillips

5th Generation
Sony
Nintendo
Sega
3DO/Panasonic/Sanyo/GoldStar

6th Generation
Sony
Microsoft
Nintendo
Sega

7th Generation
Nintendo
Sony
Microsoft

8th Generation
Sony 
Microsoft
Nintendo

9th Generation
Nintendo
Sony
Microsoft

I only listed hardware developers that managed over 1 million units sold, so Fairchild (Channel F), SNK (NeoGeo), Commodore (AmigaCD32), and some others didn't make the cut.  Point being, the market has shown that it can support 3 different hardware and software libraries simultaneously.  Whenever there has been a 4th competitor though, the lowest success of the 4 typically ends up leaving the market due to not enough return on investment to sustain another generation. 

So, there is room for another entrant to put hardware into the market.  It would have to be a company with a lot of money to invest into marketing and support for their console the way Sony and Microsoft were able to do.  And, it would have to be someone who could handle the losses of likely going a generation without being profitable.  Microsoft survived the losses they incurred breaking into the market with the XBox, and the further losses from the 360's RROD.  Sony survived seeing the entirety of its PlayStation + PS2 profits combined being wiped out by the losses the PS3 incurred.  Nintendo survived a few quarters of losses during the Wii U gen.  So, it's less likely that a startup company, or a tiny staffed operation skating by on crowdfunding and licensing like Atari or Intellivision, would ever be able to carve out a worth while niche in the market.  But, it's not impossible that someone could do it.

Anyway, 3 hardware platforms + PC is hardly "bad" for the average consumer.  As shown, its that way because of how consumers have voted with their wallets since video game consoles were incepted.  Better that way, than have the market under the total monopoly of a singular hardware as I've actually seen some users on this site advocate for over the years.  A singular hardware vision would render a lack of need for experimentation or innovation, which fortunately, the home console market is not suffering from at the moment.

What I don’t understand is: Why doesn’t Sony release the original PSPGo as a cellphone?

(Not an Xperia Play)


I never heard of Amico before now. Definitely Phantomware.

Wasn`'t it a scam from the start? And actually who truly wants this system?

For me worse than 3 consoles and PC is having only 2 GPU vendors.

I'm willing to give Intellivision Entertainment the benefit of the doubt that it didn't start off as a scam.  I'm willing to believe that they had good intentions in the beginning, and actually were committed to getting a product to market.  However, over time, their complete ineptitude gravitated them towards a situation that all but guaranteed whatever device they managed to complete at the end of the project would be dead on arrival.  For the Amico to ever have had a fighting chance in the marketplace to even carve out a tiny niche for itself, it needed to be priced within impulse buy range.  Something a mom or dad might see on a store shelf or online and think that it's cheap enough to be worth surprising their kids with for a birthday or Christmas gift.  AT their originally planned pricepoint of $149-$179, they would at least be positioning themselves to be a potential "holiday item".  And then, if the console and games were any good, word of mouth might start to do the rest.  Hardware price is important in the video game console space.  Recall that Sony infamously stole Sega's thunder at E3 1995 by simply walking to the podium and stating "$299" as the price for their upcoming PlayStation, right after Sega had already announced their Saturn would be $399.  And then recall how many PS2 owners backed away from buying a PS3 when its $499-$599 price points were announced.  Nintendo had to give the 3DS a price cut within 4 months of launch, because the mass market had determined $249 was too high a price for a dedicated handheld.  And last gen, Microsoft had to remove the Kinect from the XBox One to get its price down from $499, whereas Sony had launched the PS4 at $399 all along.

But, once Intellivision Entertainment started taking horribly negotiated loans which required the price of the console to increase to $249-$279, and again to $289-$339, they completely pushed themselves out of that impulse buy market and into the higher-end home console space already occupied by Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft.  I think at that point, when they continued doing investment rounds just to offset their previous bad loans, started selling boxed RFID cards as "Games" that a console didn't even exist yet to download them onto, all the while accumulating a growing list of refund requests from the average Joe who could see the writing on the wall (many of which go currently unanswered by IE), that's when they firmly moved into Scam territory.

There were some people in the retro community who were genuinely excited for the Amico (and some of them rabidly so), but IE priced themselves out of expanding beyond that base.  The Amico needed to be handled in such a way that small scale success would be profitable like Evercade or Playdate.  Instead, IE shot for the moon for some mind baffling reason.