Why did RealTouch device go out of business ?
 

http://www.realtouch.com/ , they stopped selling this year. Was it that most men would not put their private into a machine with 3 motors ?

PS: Sad see the going as I wrote bunch of code for it. Its a technology marvel and had some very smart people work on it.

Because it was the most idiotic idea to sell over priced, video on demand ever.

May be they should have sold it as a sex toy. See how well www.jimmyjane.com is doing

Thing was a money pit right from the get go.

Straight from their page...

Please be informed that we will no longer be able to sell RealTouch Devices as of January 1, 2014. RealTouch Interactive and VOD will continue to serve existing customers.
Due to increasing licensing and manufacturing costs we will not be able to sell RealTouch Devices effective January 1, 2014. The RealTouch product uses a very small amount of technology licensed from a technology partner and without this license in place we are unable to sell the RealTouch Device. Costs of manufacturing have also escalated significantly in the last year. After nearly a year of discussion and negotiation we have been unable to reach agreements that would allow us to continue the project at this time.

There is a limited quantity of complete RealTouch Devices remaining and we anticipate selling out prior to the end of the year. We also have a limited number of replacement devices (device only, no mini-tower) which can be used with your existing mini-tower available for purchase until January 1, 2014, or as long as supplies last.

We remain committed to RealTouch, and hope that agreements can eventually be reached to enable us to continue to provide this one of a kind experience to the public. While we will be unable to sell new devices next year, RealTouch Interactive and RealTouch VOD will continue to operate and provide touch enabled content to our existing users.

Thank you for your understanding and support,

The RealTouch Team

So possibly the cost of production increased to a level where paying the amount requested for the licensing agreement wasn't doable.

I was told their development costs was around $10,000,000. Don't know how true that was... It was clealry huge as anyone that has ever developed a physical product understands.

But the idea itself was retarded. They had an aging, outdated library of videos, they were still streaming as WMV and Real and the trying to charge 3x as much to access the same shit people were already turning away from in droves.

I don't think they had many options once it was done to recover costs. It was a weird abortion that failed from day 1, it was poorly marketed and the idea of putting your penis into an electric powered, mechanical object is something that very clearly only a disturbed few would even consider.

Like all the others that rose and fell in this industry from the early days, AEBN always was a one trick pony.

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh
Customizable white label theatres, blazing feeds for paysite content, GunzBlazing gay niche program, loads of customizable promotional tools, Roku channel - to which one trick were you referring?

I am referring to the company that continued to stream VOD, shit videos in WMV/Real format years after those formats were not used by anyone else... anywhere, ever. Gunzblazing was bought... not developed. "Loads" of tools which never changed over the years. Custom theaters that look like they are built in 1998. Need i go on?

How many people are pushing AEBN these days with all their awesomeness (according to you)? Ahh... thought so.

Howabout Freeones for starters - but they're nobody right? The point is, you said they were a "one trick pony" when they obviously are not, and in fact are arguably the best VOD program around.

Yeah... "one trick pony". They only did one thing and never did it well and now they are dead.

So what if freeones pushes them in addition to all the other white labels for extra revenue? What does that mean? They've had that in place for almost a decade. Big deal. And... "the best VOD program around"? How many are there? 5? 10? 100? How many did there used to be 10 years ago? 12 years ago? Many many many more. Its a business model that has been dying a slow, agonizing death since 2004. What have they done over those years to stand out? How can you possibly defend someone streaming videos for so many years that required users to download 3rd party software to watch them? That's completely insane and the epitome of ineptitude as a company. That's their core business and it was always done poorly. And where are they now? Nowhere. They were at one time one of the biggest media buyers, if not the biggest in adult. Today? Dead. As they lay dying that jerkoff owner spent everything on a retarded gamble to create an electronic device to stick a penis into - wiht the idea of charging 3X more for VOD to pay for it. Clearly one of the most retarded decisions, made by anyone, ever... in this industry.

When you are building a product that your own employees think is is a total joke... its time for a reality check.

The figure I heard was 3 mil. in development around the year before the official launch, so it's definitely a lot of money thrown on it.

I've also been a part of one of the first official product presentations at Internext Vegas in 09' (I guess), I've touched it and it totally freaked me out as this really felt about 95 pct. real, and I wasn't the only one who was quite impressed.

This alone persuaded me to eventually try to sell some. I've put on a landing page with mainstream media reviews, some youtube vid, explaining how to and what the requirements are, what pornstars can one have fun with etc. with a discount at the end (which still meant $199 a pop).

I even went so far that I had a Steve Jobs parody with one of the pictures from his famous product presentations, but decided to strip it down later to avoid wrath from Apple or its fans (although something like iMasturbate could be definitely a good addition to their product line up)

The supporting page was a page with real customer testimonials (that I took from Realtouch customer forums) and a youtube channel, this all had a very mainstream feel.

From what I sold I made over 200 USD per device in recurring revenue (the cut is 20 pct.) but the conversion was nowhere near acceptable from a well targeted traffic, it was more than a hard sell.

Which somehow confirmed my initial reservations:

- on one hand, that the product, once used, can be quite addictive

On the other other hand:

- that it's close to impossible to sell it online (without a demonstration, checking it with your fingers first or so..)

- it costs $ 249 (when launched, later discounted to $ 199) and you have to buy extra credit - that's not an easy sell

- that it's still a major gadget, you can hardly persuade your wife or girlfriend that it's just a new hypersonic vaccum cleaner you bought

This I observed also in the stats, someone was using it monthly then didn't touch it for six months, then started using it again, may have something to do with this.

Theoretically, according to my stats, a customer could spend more than $ 1000 on the Realtouch VOD alone, again this stat doesn't come from a relevant amount of customers, so the average can be lower. Given the fact that this comes from about 24 months of customer life it may also confirm that the pricepoint for VOD was most likely perceived as high.

They could as well do better offering it for extra $29,95 to US members with their AEBN membership, or even give it away for the price of shipping to those that are already repeating, current customers that have already spent $ over a certain threshold.

Maybe they could even offer that to overseas customers this way, since they wouldn't be technically selling the gadget, but PPV only.

I actually think they could have made it work especially in the interactive cam space had it not been for all the licensing fees. I am assuming by their statement that is what ultimately did them in.

What is confusing though is that you would have thought they would have known patents existed that covered what they were doing. That is one of these first things you do before investing a bunch of money and introducing a new product (especially hardware). However, to be fair they could have even had a patent on their product and still be sued by a company claiming priority on the claims.

People on the boards always talk about innovate or die which is 100 percent true. However, it is hard to innovate with so many blood sucking patent trolls out there. They just wait for you to get big and then take a pound of flesh. The patent trolls dont even need to be right in their claims. They just have a bunch of attorneys willing to bleed you. The whole patent system is a mess and really hinders innovation.

Over the years, I have seen so many new interactive adult products at shows and almost everyone of them is violating some kind of patent that exists. They either dont know they are or they are being naive to think no one will notice. Patent trolls generally wont bother you when you are small time. They wait until you are big, have money, and then take their shot.