Date:
Tuesday , September 11, 2007
Author:
Kyle Bennett
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The New Commodore Rocks – Because I Said So!

Commodore Gaming comes to HardOCP looking to get some free press about its new gaming machines in North America. Check out what happens when you ask this tech company to back up its performance claims. You wanted free press, here ya go!

continued...

Referencing both his email and his phone message I sent him another email…

Can’t back up your claims and now I am the bitter, harping guy that is picking on you? I would suggest if you are going to send your tripe to my mailbox that you can back up what you say. Now, that your panties are out of the wad, how bout we get back to specs and facts instead of your whining?

Have the engineer send me the test data that backs up your 30% claim with system specifications and BIOS settings. Should not be a hard thing for a leading company in the PC space to produce. I would love to review it.

Kyle R Bennett

Now in my eyes, if you are going to tell me you beat all your competitors and beat them by as much as up to 30%, I want to see the data that backs up those statements. It is a standard in our little computer hardware niche of the world that this be done. AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA do it. Dell, HP, and Gateway also do it as well as the smaller boutique system builders. You don’t simply go around making specific statements such as "beating every other competitor, by as much as up to 30% in 3DMark without overclocking your system configuration" and then not expect anyone to call you out to prove your statements.

In Commodore Gaming’s world, it seems as though its answer is to send me a box months from now and have me run a myriad of tests in which to disprove their statement. First off, that is a very expensive project which they are suggesting I invest HardOCP resources into. Second, Commodore Gaming doesn’t give me any tested system specifications that they test against and only then mention one benchmark score.

From this point out, the emails and messages got ugly and personal and there is nothing to be gained by sharing those with you. But suffice it to say that Commodore Gaming did not like me asking the tough questions and Dave decided to try and pull the focus of the conversation away from the true matter at heart, and that was backing up the statements made about Commodore Gaming’s PC performance. Doing my best to get the conversation back in focus, I gave Dave one last shot at answering my questions.

I would specifically like to see you qualify these statements.

“Commodore systems have managed to beat every other high performance PC on the market without overclocking our chips. In some cases we have beat major gaming systems by 30% in 3DMark tests. … This makes them a leader since they are very clearly winning the performance wars overseas.”

I would like to see your testing data showing every other high performance PC on the market being beaten and I would specifically like to see the 30% cases spelled out in detail.

“If nothing else they use the top components from a verity of name brand manufacturers which puts them at or near the top even without testing.”

This statement leaves me a bit confused as well and would like your logic on this. It seems to say to me something quite the opposite of what is spelled out above to the point of being in direct conflict with the previous statements.

Kyle R Bennett

And after that, this was the return email I got from Dave representing Commodore Gaming on August 30, 2007.

I will be gone from Friday through Monday for the long weekend. When I get back I can offer to take care of you with the deal I offered in the last email. Your big issue originally was me proving the first statement. I am offering to do that. If not I look forward to reading your article. I’m sure based on your recent comments it will not contain any personal attacks and will treat Commodore fairly as you claim you have been trying to do along.

-David

Since then, I have not heard from Dave of Traction PR or the gentleman at Commodore Gaming that was copied in on the emails (S. Charles) when the conversation started getting heated.

Who Cares?

Some of you may be wondering why you are reading this, and I'm sure there are others that are wondering why I am taking time to write this, and rightly so. My first instinct when in a situation like this is to simply shut up and move along. My thought is that I do not want to give the offending party any publicity at all. But there are some times that some things need to be said and this is one of those times. Seeing companies come into “our” hardware arena that have the ability to directly impact a portion of HardOCP readers makes me want to make sure those HardOCP readers have my 2 cents. Yeah, I do take some ownership of our corner of the industry and fully built performance PCs do fall into that realm. Keep in mind too that I did not go out researching Commodore Gaming’s PCs, but rather they showed up in my inbox looking for free press coverage on the pages of HardOCP. Much the same way our attention was brought to Infinium Labs back in 2004.

Spinning or Lying?

We all know that PR people are paid to paint a pretty picture and get it onto the news pages that occupy the Web. PR firms are paid huge sums of money for doing this as most companies know that grassroots buzz about a product can bring attention to it that simply cannot be purchased otherwise. PR people are supposed to be skilled artisans when it comes to making this happen, but there is a point where positive spin and lying about something become very different things.

Come and tell me that your product is the “best” and we assume that there is some way in which the product is the “best.” That is overly subjective anyway. Certainly the “best” is hard to prove or disprove. We as consumers are very aware of these types of statements and have learned how to digest them over the years.

Come and tell me that your product has, “managed to beat every other high performance PC on the market” and we have a statement that is in no way subjective. You tell me that, “we have beat major gaming systems by 30%,” and we have something that is again is no way subjective. Those statements are ones I fully expect to be backed up with hard data when asked to do so. Commodore Gaming and their PR company were repeatedly asked to prove their statements and they have failed to do so. We have waited for a week beyond their committed date to supply such information and we have never heard from them again. So at this point, I have to form the opinion that Dave with Traction PR representing Commodore Gaming was simply lying to me.

If you are buying a performance PC to play 20 year old Commodore games on, then Commodore Gaming’s PC seems like the obvious choice. If you are looking for a PC to play new games on, I know Commodore Gaming’s PC just made my short list of companies that there is no way in Hell I would buy from. The way I see it, blatantly lying to the press then getting your panties in a wad when you are called out on foolhardy claims is no way to win sales in the performance PC business. As highlighted by the time it took write this, some of us do care enough to make sure we take the time to let our friends know about questionable company claims made in our tight knit end of the industry.

The Bottom Line

When you hear a company make a specific performance claim, be sure you ask them to prove their statements with data. If its representative replies “Are you serious?” when you ask them what makes them a leader in the industry, it is a fairly good indicator that the statements are not tethered to fact. In the coverage of the enthusiast and performance computer equipment and systems, I expect at the very least a company be able to somewhat back up their statements no matter how diluted the data might be. When a company making big claims can’t even begin to back those claims up and gets offended when you ask them to do so, that is a big red flag that tells me personally to not spend my money with that company.

I think if all Commodore Gaming has is a C64 emulator and a bunch of empty claims, it might as well save its investors some money and close up its North American operations now. To me it is a shame that we are seeing the Commodore brand, which has huge place in the hearts of many computer enthusiasts, being debased and tarnished.

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