50$ for what exactly?

[DancinShade]

Hi! I'm new to the "front-end scene" and I'm gonna be honest, I don't want to pay 50$ for something that I don't know enough about, so please hear me out!

As I see it, it's 50$ to have launchbox, bigbox and emumovie for life, is that right?

[DOS76]

$50 is for a premium life time license to LaunchBox and BigBox only EmuMovies is a separate entity and is not included with that price. You can also purchase a year license of LB/BB for only $20 and at the end of the year the program will continue to work in the state it is in but you will no longer be able to continue updating the program. There are renewal options after the year but I believe they have recently changed and I am unsure of the exact options these days.

[DOS76]

Checked further into this and the renewal options haven't changed I just had them wrong to begin with after the 1st year is up you can pay a $10 renewal fee for another year or opt to pay $30 to get the life time license.

[Ultra God Azgorath]

DancinShade I highly recommend you get the yearly license just to give bigbox a test drive and decide for yourself if you love it enough to upgrade to lifetime license or hate it enough to use something else. I've tried most of the frontends available and for me personally, LB/BB is the best and easiest I've used. I 1st bought the yearly license to test it out and after a month I was hooked and decided to upgrade to lifetime license and never looked back nor regretted it since. Also if you decide to purchase an emumovies license, you only need the monthly license ($20 for 1st month, $5 per month thereafter) to download whatever videos you need/want. One of the many awesome things about BB is the custom themes where if you like the looks of the emulationstation or hyperspin frontends but don't like how complicated and/or time consuming they are to setup, there's BB custom themes that you can download that make BB look exactly (or VERY similar) like them so you get best of both worlds.

Edited April 6, 2018 by Shinryu

[Zombeaver]

Or, better yet, try out the free version and see if you like it. There's quite a bit you can do with LB without paying anything. If, after that, the premium features are something you'd like access to after you've settled in, get a premium license. There are quite a few really good premium features that are worth getting, but there's no reason to jump right into them without trying the free package out first. If you like it and decide to buy a premium license, you'll get a discount code which you can use over at Emumovies too. I recommend Lifetime for both as you'll most definitely get your money's worth, but you should decide whether or not it's a front end that you want to use first.

[thedevilsjester]

On 4/6/2018 at 10:46 AM, Zombeaver said:

Or, better yet, try out the free version and see if you like it. There's quite a bit you can do with LB without paying anything.

Anecdotally, everyone I know that wants a front end, wants a controller/couch based front end.  Like me, many of them have run the gamut of front ends that provide this, have found them lacking, and end up here.  Unfortunately, if this is what you want, a nice console/couch based experience, there is no way that you can try this out without first purchasing BigBox.  There is no demo or trial of any kind.  I very nearly skipped past LaunchBox because of this.

Trying out LaunchBox will give you an insight on the quality of the application, how easy it is to configure (even if you use BigBox, all of your configuration will be done via LaunchBox) and the plethora of options, pre-sets, guided wizards, and other things that really make the system shine and stand out from the competition.  For what they are asking, it is very much worth the cost of entry.  Buy the $20 license, and if its everything you want, or if you want to support the developers to make it better, upgrade to to the $50 license (they have an upgrade option).