IndyDDR.com

Some sad news given that they did make some of the best DDR platforms. Recently, Cobalt Flux went out of business. (I was gonna buy two of the new control boards too which makes this even more unfortunate.)

They had a good run.

Do you know what prompted them to shut down?

LikeableRodent wrote:Do you know what prompted them to shut down?

I can't imagine their profits have been increasing these days. Is there really still a decent market for custom built home controllers?

SoDeepPolaris wrote:Is there really still a decent market for custom built home controllers?

My sole connection to Bemani in the US is through this forum, so I really have no idea how much demand there is. I also suppose they never branched out from dance pads?

I was more hoping to read an official announcement, as my short Google search came up with nothing, other than a fanboy-written Wikipedia article.

At this point anyone who wanted a Cobalt Flux has one already and these aren't exactly items that people buy more than once. The home (and arcade, for that matter) dance game community here isn't growing so it's not a surprise that they shut down. I have no idea how they operated, but from what I can tell these pads were mass produced somewhere, stored in a warehouse, and then shipped out as orders came in. I don't think they diversified and sold anything else so when interest in home pads went kaput then so did this business.

If you want to be sustainable in this sort of business you really have to go the Desktop Arcade / Ransai / DJ Dao / MiniMaid route where your Beet game peripheral is made to order and your production comes from out of your garage or something so you have absolutely no overhead and all the costs + markup for each individual part gets passed on to the customer.

Merk wrote:At this point anyone who wanted a Cobalt Flux has one already and these aren't exactly items that people buy more than once. The home (and arcade, for that matter) dance game community here isn't growing so it's not a surprise that they shut down. I have no idea how they operated, but from what I can tell these pads were mass produced somewhere, stored in a warehouse, and then shipped out as orders came in. I don't think they diversified and sold anything else so when interest in home pads went kaput then so did this business.

If you want to be sustainable in this sort of business you really have to go the Desktop Arcade / Ransai / DJ Dao / MiniMaid route where your Beet game peripheral is made to order and your production comes from out of your garage or something so you have absolutely no overhead and all the costs + markup for each individual part gets passed on to the customer.

For the most part this is dead on. I will mention though that they did try to make their own light-gun, but I don't think it sold very well. If Cobalt Flux would have expanded to other arcade style controllers like fight-sticks they may still be around today.

Do you have any credible sources for this information besides their web domain expiring?

I apologize for the slight delay on responding. In short, I found out cause I attempted to order new control boards and their number was not working at all when I tried that. It was after some research that I found several forums confirming their end and http://www.bemanistyle.com/index.php/ne ... iness-2297 being further confirmation.