Many CD Games Removed
I've removed most of the CD games from the website due to not being able to afford hosting them. For the past year, I've been taking a $400 loss on this website per a month, but now with the removal of the CD games, I should be able to get that down to $150. Still not great, but an improvement. My goal is to eventually break even.

I did keep the most popular games for the CD systems. In most cases, I kept the top 5-10%. Here's a breakdown of how many games we now have for each CD system:
3DO = 6
CDi = 18
Dreamcast = 49
PCFX = 5
PlayStation = 100
Sega CD = 25
Sega Saturn = 43
TurboGrafx CD = 40

I originally thought I'd have to remove many MAME games, but I was able to fit them all on the new server.

My wife has been pretty upset with me that this site has had a negative margin of $5000 in the past year. It's been more than 2 years now since this site was profitable. I've been trying to find solutions to keep this site alive, and I'll continue to do so. Hosting terabytes worth of games is costly, which is why the biggest games had to be removed. Removing the Retro Game Room is still not something I want to consider because I think that's the only thing that keeps this site alive. There's a lot of behind the scenes sacrifice I have to make for this site I usually don't talk about, and this definitely would be one of them.

I'm willing to add a few CD games back to the site based on requests. So if anyone has recommendations of games, feel free to suggest them and I may get them added back.


Some DS Games Added
The removal of 3000+ CD games is a big loss for the site, so to make it up to everyone, I've added some DS games. At the moment there are 15 DS games, and I'm willing to add more. In fact, I'm willing to add up to 50 DS games total. Just keep in mind that I'm not allowed to have any DS games that Nintendo developed.

You can find the DS games here:
https://www.vizzed.com/play-ds/

If you want to see certain DS games added that you think would be popular and that aren't 1st party Nintendo games, go ahead and make your suggestions.

HI Davideo7 Just a thought to make some room on the servers.Get rid of most of the Atari Jaguar games because most of the dont work anyway lol.

Vizzed gets DS games before GTA 6 releases. What kind of timeline is this.

Its pretty unfortunately how much the site has decline over the past several years, but its no ones fault. Forums are declining in general, and Nintendo bloody battle with emulation really killed the activity. Its still great to see the site going despite the obstacles.

As for a popular ds game how about The World Ends With You? It sucks to hear the site has been operating as such a loss the past few years if I can ask would removing music help? Like for example music from less popular systems? I imagine a bunch of music adds up over time as well though I know you revamped the music room fairly recently so not the best option either, do screenshots that no longer show an image on still take up space? Just kind of throwing out random ideas on things that could be deleted potentially, if It'd help I'd even suggest taking the down the mc server and just allowing downloads of all the worlds or something as it's popularity has declined quite a bit again I believe. Hoping one of the ideas helps after all as a recently married man I gotta say happy wife = happy life lol.

I completely understand and support the removal of CD games to get the cost down, and I respect your continued dedication to this site, even though it has become a financial burden. Honestly, if I was in your shoes, I probably would've pulled the plug a while ago if it was costing me $400/month.

Is there any other way to make Vizzed profitable (or at least break even) again? In addition to cutting costs, are they ways to increase income? Bombard me with ads if you have to, I don't mind lol.

I just want to point out that cartridge games are usually very small compared to CD games, as to why I was able to keep all the cartridge games. For example, 8-bit cartridge games might average 0.05 MB, 16-bit cartridge games might average 0.5 MB, heck even N64 cartridges average only around 16 MB each. However, since CDs have a max size of 700 MB (and even more if it's a multi-disc game), the average CD game is probably around 320 MB.

To put that into perspective, the average CD game is the same size as about 640 16-bit cartridge games.

newlifechat : Our entire Jaguar collection is only 110 MB, which is very small. We might eventually increase the compatibility for it so I think it's worth keeping. I appreciate the advice though.

supercool22 : The removal of Nintendo games hurt the most, but what has continued to hurt is the number of competition sites. Years ago, this site really only had 1 or 2 sites that offered browser emulation. Now there's so many, I wouldn't doubt if it was in the 100s.

claytune : I've considered finding and running a script that compresses some of the video game music. There are some that have a bitrate of 320 KBPS, when I think for the purpose of this site, 128 KBPS is big enough, so it would cut those by more than half. Screenshots don't take up much space, and the ones that no longer show an image, I'm not too sure about those.

I've added World Ends With You.

The Minecraft server is a cost reduction that I plan to tackle next. It's about $100 a month but it also contains the netplay server on it. The netplay server I should be able to migrate to my primary server. As for the Minecraft server, I've tried multiple times to migrate it and there's weird compatibility issues that I can't seem to figure out. I'm going to tackle that again at some point. I'd hate to get rid of the Minecraft server so at very least, I'd get a cheaper server that's maybe only $20 a month. It would possibly make it a little more laggy and have a lower player limit and a lower draw distance, but it'd be worth doing that as opposed to getting rid of it completely.

It's very true that a wife dictates a man's happiness.

tgags123 : I've had Vizzed for so long, and while I don't really show it, the members and this community mean too much to me. I'd have too much emptiness in my life without this site.

I still have to try out new ad networks. It's a time consuming process, which is why I haven't done it yet. But, if I can find a decent ad network to go along with the current, and if I increased the amount of ads on the site, I think I could break even (after cutting site costs by another $100).

It really is very unfortunate, seeing an essential downsizing of Vizzed. I'm almost reminded of Gottlieb when many of their employees were forcefully laid off during their Mylstar era.

Anyway, if a Playstation game can still be added, how about Gran Turismo 2 Plus? I've already made a Request for it a few weeks back.

I should also point out that DS games aren't nearly as big as CD games. The average DS game is around 64 MB, and this is why I can justify adding up to 50 DS games.

I just added 3 more DS games:
Combat of Giants - Dinosaurs
Combat of Giants - Dragons
Combat of Giants - Mutant Insects

TouchMaster97 : Since that's a 2 disc game, which would be 1 GB total, would you be fine with just 1 disc being added? There's the Arcade Disc, and then the Simulation Disc.

Just the Simulation Disc can do for now, though in the future, if this site starts to grow again, I'd appreciate the Arcade disc also being added, if at all possible.

I've added Gran Turismo 2 Plus

TouchMaster97 : Letting you know.

Hate that there's a need for this, but downsizing is the right call - sustainability trumps all with how many competitors there are! Vizzed is one of the few sites that offers a comprehensive plugin that allows people to play both games hosted on Vizzed and their own games, game pages, and a board to go with it - it deserves more visibility and traffic than it gets.

I know how much you care about the site, and the time/money you've poured into Vizzed is not unnoticed or unappreciated. I hope you're able to break even with these changes/changes to the minecraft server/new ad network!

Davideo7 hopefully your wife is not to mad at you, i hope she can help you so that you guys don't get mad at each other.

Davideo7 can i have the pitfall for sega cd back, i love that 3d effect where harry swings from vine to vine, in the intro part.

Like other have said in this thread, that is totally understand able, especially in todays economy. With Cd storage from back in the 90's third developers were complaining about the lack of space that n64 cartridges had compared to cd's which was a valid reason for them to not develop on the n64 due to seeing the sizes differences. Funny how years later it's actually working in some peoples favor. On another note, its cool to see some ds games finally being added in and those games were not big either 20 years ago. I'd like to see some of the Digimon ds games and dragon quest games be added some time sense I never got to play them specially with dq9. with dq9 you could can find the Japanese version for cheaper compared to the usa version, all you need to do is apply a fan translation rom hack/patch to it and you'd have it in English. Same with the Japanese region exclusive for the other dragon quest games but i don't they be any cheaper.

I had a couple of suggestions

1. Would you be able to add video ads to the on site emulation, or at least the in browser games? I'm thinking similiar to YouTube, where there are 30 seconds ads. (I'm not sure if there is a payout difference if the ad is unskippable or skippable). Or do you feel that this would do more harm than good?
2. With hundreds, almost assuredly thousands of games, and the need to downsize, would dropping the games that don't get paid much help out at all? Say, either the bottom 5%, or those that have less than X number of plays a month? And, if a game goes away that enough people want, you could always readd it. I'm thinking you could have a request system that auto-populates into an Excell sheet or something similiar?
3. What about allowing the selling and / or trading of physical games? You could either have a system where people could list on site, and you take a cut. OR you could have people mail you their games, and you sell them, and take a cut, similiar to sports cards and TCG Card Consigners on eBay?