Christian Simpson, who goes by Peri Fractic on YouTube, has rebranded his popular retro gaming channel as "Retro Recipes x Commodore" and says he is now the "acting CEO of Commodore Corporation." Which is rather a turn-up for the books, even if Simpson trailed this deal a few weeks ago.
The news comes via the below video, in which Simpson briefly encapsulates the last seven months of behind-the-scenes negotiations with the previous owners of the brand, explains the deal that's in place, and introduces a bunch of former Commodore staff who'll be involved with the project.
The deal values Commodore in "the low seven figures," which may not seem much for a company that was once the largest home computer manufacturer on the market, but one of the more tangled questions that Simpson's video doesn't quite answer is what part/s of Commodore this deal is for.
The original Commodore went bankrupt in 1994, was liquidated, and its assets were acquired by the Germany company Escom: which would go bankrupt itself a few years later. Since then the Commodore and Amiga trademarks, patents, and IP have changed hands among various companies, and it's not clear what "the whole company" means in that kind of context. The deal is with Commodore Corporation, a Dutch firm that owns the Commodore branding, and involves 46 trademarks.
The other big question, even though Simpson goes into some detail on this, is how the deal is going to be financed. A share purchase agreement is in place for those "low seven figures," Simpson says he's re-mortgaged to get this far, and adds that "household names who don't want to be named" are interested before name-dropping Elon Musk (whose computing career began on a Commodore). They're looking for angel investors, but there's no indication of the timeframe on any deal.
But for all the caveats, there is a deal in place, and Simpson's clearly been beavering away on what any new iteration of Commodore might look like. The vibe is "honoring our past, innovating the future" and is based around a rather charming vision of an alt-history where Commodore never went bankrupt and… somehow saved us all from social media? Maybe somewhere in the multiverse Mark Zuckerberg got brained by a C64.
The one thing that should reassure Commodore fans is how many luminaries Simpson's managed to round-up. These include Albert Charpentier (designer of the C64), Bill Herd (designer of the C128), Michael Tomczyk (who led the development and launch of the Vic 20), David Pleasance (former Commodore VP) and many others.
The video ends with a hardware tease: Simpson has something on his lap and, as he lifts it, the video cuts to a loading screen, and teases a reveal in two weeks.
So there are a whole bunch of questions about this deal, mainly whether it will end up fully funded, and whether we'll ever see a product from this iteration of Commodore ('ve reached out to Simpson and will update with any response). But I don't want to end on a bum note, because like many I've watched with despair as once-great companies of yesteryear fail, fall into obscurity, and are portioned-out among the vultures. Commodore's in that bracket alongside its onetime stablemate Amiga, with its various owners using the branding for everything from paper shredders to USB sticks.
In other words, Commodore could do a lot worse than someone like Simpson, whose passion for retro gaming is obvious, and is already invested enough to remortgage his house. Whether he can create something like "the original Commodore" is doubtful, even if he's done a good job getting the band back together, but there is ample room for Commodore to be something more than it is now. Whatever he does manage to pull off, it'll surely be better than some zombie shell that just licenses the logo for a few t-shirts.
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