r/Backbone

I was scrolling through YouTube this morning and came across an ad for Backbone that just came across as really tone deaf and really left a bad taste in my mouth about the brand. The photo here isn’t the exact ad, I tried for about a half hour to get it to pop up again because I was in such disbelief and I wish I had a link to it, but it’s one of those revolving ads that pops up when you start a video.

In the ad there is a person holding a BB Pro much like how it’s framed in the photo I’ve captioned. A guy starts talking about the Backbone and then he bring up reviews (this was a sponsored ad and not some rando YouTube short) and then he says the reviews are mixed, with a lot of the negative complaints being about “quality and longevity” and the tone was very dismissive. That is followed up well the people making those comments are just “haters”, which is where the ad went south for me and I can’t quite remember what he said after that but it gave me like ‘they are just trolls’ vibes.

It’s disappointing, because it’s been documented numerous times the design flaw these controllers have, and the people who make these things have to be aware of it. I haven’t been as vocal or negative as a lot of people have here or on discord about the product. But since I first purchased my first one after seeing a Facebook ad in year one when the product went to market, I have bought 8 of these things. Right now I have one still standing, my second gen lightning PS edition, ever single other has failed with a bad ribbon cable. My Black second gen BB One lightning failed last month, and once I discovered it, I started to jump on Amazon to see how much the cables cost so maybe I can just start fixing them all myself. When they started selling the product at retail I would buy a Best Buy warranty with each one because it wasn’t a if, it was a when when it came to it not working. Unfortunately for this last one my 1 year warranty ran out a few months prior and now you can’t get lightning editions at retail anymore since lighting iPhones have been phased out.

Then later in the ad the person said something to the effect of “ and well, if your’s does have a problem it has a one year warranty so you don’t have anything to worry about, and that’s that.” It’s very “we will treat the symptom so we can keep you coming back, but we won’t fix the problem”

But to put an ad out for product out with one of the highest failure rates I’ve ever seen from a consumer product and then to call people haters for complaining about it, it’s just bad look. I’m sure it probably hurts somebody’s feelings when they read some of these comments lambasting the product, but that comes with the territory and you have to be bigger than that as a company. If you want people to stop bashing the product, make a better product. I’ve spent over $1000 towards buying these things because on a fundamental level it has been the best way I’ve found so far to play video games using my phone. They all have broken, not because of normal wear and tear, but because of a design flaw. I’m not sure what I will do once my last one goes, and the reason I haven’t bought a pro yet is I’m afraid of having the same issue and having to replace for an even higher price tag.

I’m sorry for the lengthy post and this has been the most critical I’ve been on reddit about BB, but this was all trigger because an ad was greenlit calling your consumers haters. Do better.

We've heard a lot of your feedback on emulation in the Backbone App, mostly around compatibility, performance, and overall reliability. So we went back and rebuilt the underlying emulation system from scratch.

Backbone now runs custom, native emulator cores built directly into the app for:

• NES
• SNES
• Game Boy
• Game Boy Advance
• Sega Genesis / Mega Drive

Moving to native emulator cores means wider game compatibility, better performance, refined button mapping, and a more reliable emulator experience across all your games. Simply click the tile and add any ROM of the supported cores. No need to shuffle between which core to use! We’ll handle that on our end and instantly let you play your ROM.

What’s next?

N64 is coming next and should roll out in the next few weeks. We’ll be launching it as a Beta while we continue testing and improving compatibility.

We’ve also added save states on a per-game basis, so your progress is maintained individually for each game. 

We’re also exploring ways to bring richer retro artwork, metadata, and other assets into the experience over time.

Where you can help us:

We’ve spent a lot of time testing the new cores across games and devices, but emulation can have plenty of game-specific edge cases. If you run into something that doesn’t look, sound, or play correctly, please let us know.

We’ll share more as N64 gets closer. In the meantime, give the new cores a try and tell us what you think.

TL;DR: We rebuilt Backbone’s emulator with native cores for NES, SNES, Game Boy, GBA, and Genesis / Mega Drive. Better compatibility, performance, reliability, and per-game save states. N64 is coming soon and we’d love to hear your feedback on these new updates!

Over the past few months, we’ve been listening closely to your feedback about the Backbone App, and today we’re excited to start rolling out one of our biggest app updates yet. These features are FREE for all Backbone users.

Here’s what’s new (no subscription required):

🎮 Works with any controller!
The Backbone App now supports docked, wired, and any Bluetooth wireless controller across Android and iOS!

📱 A Completely Refreshed Home Screen
We’ve redesigned the app experience with new tab bar navigation, better Game Library organization, and improved touch support to make finding and jumping into games faster and easier.

📰 Introducing What’s New in Backbone

Keeping up with your favorite games shouldn’t mean bouncing between news sites, YouTube, patch notes, reviews, and guides.

With What’s New, Backbone brings the most relevant gaming updates into one personalized feed inside the app. We scan trusted gaming outlets, creators, YT channels, official updates, and more, then organize that content around the games you actually play and follow. 

Be sure to check out the “For You” feed where you’ll see all the latest content for games you care about most, right where you already play.

📲 All new Backbone iPad and tablet app
We’ve heard your feedback and now the Backbone App is fully supported on iPadOS and Android Tablets! Check it out on the app store and game on the big screen!

This update is just the beginning, over the next few weeks we’ll be sharing deeper dives into each of these features and more.

We’d love to hear in the comments what you’re most excited to try first. What features should we add next?

App updates for both iOS and Android will be rolling out in a few weeks.