一位 Star Wars 演员如何成为 Commodore CEO

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In This Edition,
Commodore CEO Peri Fractic on…

• The return of the C64

• Its ‘digital detox’ flip phone

• The Cyberpunk partnership

• Getting to the level of Atari

Did you know that the CEO of Commodore was in Star Wars: Episode 1 – The Phantom Menace?

It was his first film role. He was seen running across a hangar while being shot at. And Christian Simpson, or Peri Fractic as he’s known, would appear in various Star Wars movies through the years.

How Fractic went from a galaxy far, far away to Commodore was via his YouTube channel. As a fan of retro, and owner of a Commodore 64 and Amstrad PCW, Fractic began doing retro videos. And then in 2024, he reviewed the Commodore 64X (a PC based on the original 1982 Commodore 64). That video clocked up over a million views and caught the eye of the Commodore brand owners.

Fractic, alongside fellow experts Leo Nigro and Sean Donohue, made three proposals to Commodore. The first was around working together, the second involved licensing the brand, and the third (suggested half-jokingly) was to buy the company.

They took the third option.

“You seem to know Commodore better than we do,” they told Fractic. “So we might like to sell you the whole company”.

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The C64 returns

Under new ownership, Commodore released the Commodore 64 Ultimate last year, a system that replicated the original machine with a few enhancements.

However, Fractic is wary that retro hardware has a potentially limited lifespan.

“It is big in the sense that all those parents, even grandparents, are now introducing their kids to it,” Fractic tells us outside the company’s Gamescom booth.

“The nostalgia sort of permeates through two, three generations. You look [on our booth], there’s a kid playing on a C64 right now. Who’s next to him? His dad. That works really well for keeping nostalgia alive.

“But you look at it as a segment, it’s still small and hobbyist. Also, we’re not getting any younger. You could argue that that will eventually dwindle. But our goal is you attract Gen Z with the Y2K aesthetics. Those kids, instead of just saying, ‘That’s cool, Dad’, and then going back to their iPhones, they’re now going to see this surrounding them, and feel this is a vibe they like. And that way, it becomes sustainable. Those kids grow up, and they show their kids, and we keep doing this.

“But it could dwindle, which is why we have to do modern products alongside it.”

The digital detox

That ‘modern’ product is the Callback 8020, a flip phone that runs Android apps but blocks web browsers and social media.

“People want to go back to simpler tech. They’re getting sick of their data being harvested and sold, tracking everywhere, tracking cookies,” Fractic says. “People want to go back to a simpler tech. Commodore is from that time.

“The lights dimmed [on Commodore] in 1994, right before the internet became a thing. It almost makes sense if you reboot Commodore, you start where you left off. So, now we’re in the 1995 to 2000 era for Commodore. Which is perfect, because that’s what people want to go back to.

“That’s where digital minimalism fits in perfectly with Commodore.”

“We’re in the 1995 to 2000 era for Commodore. Which is perfect, because that’s what people want to go back to”

The Commodore 64 Ultimate was a hit. It generated $2 million in revenue in three weeks, with 27,000 units sold. “Which is mind-blowing for a 40-year-old computer,” Fractic noted.

However, the Callback 8020 did in one weekend what the C64 managed in three months.

“The movement is huge towards digital minimalism, more intentional tech,” Fractic explains. “You’ve seen people buying vinyl records again, going back to flip phones organically, and just getting off Facebook. It’s happening with or without us. But my philosophy is we need to build Commodore into the same level as Google and Apple. So, we can do the cool retro things for the fans. But… how do we build Commodore to be that big based on nostalgia alone? That’s a niche. You can’t do it as a hobbyist, boutique brand. So, our philosophy with the flip phone, and with other things you’re going to see from us, is those bring in the bigger audience.”

That includes its latest tie-in with CD Projekt Red. At Gamescom, Commodore showcased the Commodore 77, which is a version of the C64 based around the hit RPG Cyberpunk 2077.

“In Cyberpunk, their 2077 version of the future stems away from our real future in the early ‘80s. Some people say 1982 or ‘84, is when the Cyberpunk timeline diverges,” says Fractic. “In our story, Commodore survived, continued on, and in 2077, it’s still a brand that people love. So, in their world, you can still buy a 64, but it’s now a 77, it’s been upgraded a bit.

“Retro-futurism is how you describe Cyberpunk. Like Blade Runner. Our whole philosophy here is we do retro, and we do future. We do the two hand-in-hand.”

The component crisis

Unfortunately for the new-look Commodore, its comeback has coincided with the global component crisis, with the price of RAM and storage having a significant impact on hardware costs.

“We’ve been somewhat impacted, yes,” admits Fractic. “We’ve been quite lucky that we made a decision early on to buy up a bunch of FPGAs, more than we needed. There was talk of using them in a separate product, so we had them on standby. Then when the FPGA prices more than doubled, we were able to tap into our existing stock of 10,000 FPGAs. It does continue to impact us. We see a lot of complaints about the phone price. We found a way to drop it by $100, but $399 for a flip phone, although it’s not your granny’s flip phone, can seem expensive. That is purely because the RAM price went from $11 per unit to $86 per unit.

“That’s just for the memory. That’s before you look at development, software licensing, everything else. To release that phone for $400, we have a tiny sliver of a margin on that.”

The new Commodore isn’t all about hardware, however. It’s also investing in games. At the end of last year, it released Jupiter Lander 2: Jupiter Fracture for the C64 Ultimate, which is a sequel to the original 1982 game. And late last month it published the Alien Breed 35^th Anniversary Collection, in collaboration with developer Antstream and Alien Breed owners Team17, on consoles and PC.

“Alien Breed was something that was pitched to us by Antstream and Team17,” Fractic says. “They’d done a lot of the legwork already. We were able to come in and help with the publishing, and obviously it’s got our name front and center, which is amazing.

“We receive pitches almost daily. We just announced something called ‘Made for Ultimate’, which is to develop games specifically for the C64 Ultimate to take advantage of the extra 24 channels of sound, the extra RAM and CPU speed. If you go to the bottom of our website, there is something that says ‘Build with us.’ You can submit stuff. I look at every single submission personally.”

He adds that software is very much part of the future plan, but he’s wary of expanding too fast.

“Everything still passes across my desk, every single decision, because I want it to have one very clear vision,” he says. “There’s a reason in Hollywood you have one director on set, so the movie is one vision. We’re being very cautious about expansion. We have about 30 team members now, which almost feels too big for a startup. But when you look at the scale of what we’re doing, I couldn’t do it alone. We’re very slowly bringing on team members and being cautious with the cash flow.”

“I don’t know if we’ll become a public company, but we get a lot of requests for that from the fanbase”

Ultimately, the goal is to try and replicate some of the success seen by another iconic gaming brand that’s enjoyed quite the retro revival.

“I do see [us being at the level of] Atari in terms of the turnover they’re generating,” Fractic says of the five-year vision.

“They’re a public company. I don’t know if we’ll become a public company, but we get a lot of requests for that from the fanbase. They want to own a piece of Commodore. And that would be one of a couple of ways we could allow people to have a share certificate for Commodore on your wall.

“I originally said I want to do two things really well every year. We’ve done, I think, six or seven things. Every single one’s been successful. We’re very lucky. I’d like to still not do too much, and just keep growing.”