New Atari Console that Ataribox?

[racerx]

If your "limited edition" merchandise is on sale, it might be indicative of a problem.

[+frankodragon]

I've said it before and I'll say it again. It won't be long until you find those speakerhats in Dollar Trees and Pound Lands all over the world.

[Flojomojo]

I've said it before and I'll say it again. It won't be long until you find those speakerhats in Dollar Trees and Pound Lands all over the world.

 

I think you were wrong the first time, as now

 

"AtariLife" doesn't have that kind of distribution power. If they could have sold these in retail, don't you think they'd already be in stores?

[Flojomojo]

 

My giant Xbox One would wear this well, don't you think? Truly, an Atari Box.

[pacman000]

xbxo-wgs.jpg

 

My giant Xbox One would wear this well, don't you think? Truly, an Atari Box.

That actually looks very nice. Can I get one, or is it only a concept?

[Flojomojo]

That actually looks very nice. Can I get one, or is it only a concept?

Yes, it's real. The grill going in two different directions is a little weird, but it certainly fits the lines of the boxy thing.

 

There are a zillion skins for just about anything you can imagine at Decal Girl.

 

https://www.decalgirl.com/

[+frankodragon]

Question that came up in my mind today was would Billy Mitchell wear one of those Speakerhats? He'd probably have to wear a suit that matches it.

[Pink]

I like my hat better. No annoying speakers, microphones, bluetooth or any of that.

 

Oh, and mine was only $8.

 

Edited April 18, 2018 by Pink

[Flojomojo]

I like my hat better. No annoying speakers, microphones, bluetooth or any of that.

 

Oh, and mine was only $8.

 

atarihat.jpg

I like that hat better, too. The colors are way more Castro Street than 2600!

[The Mr. Video]

your avatar needs moar gameband and taco's

Fixed it.

[pacman000]

Me: "My eyes, & ears, & nose, & every other sense in my body keeps telling me the Ataribox/VCS isn't happening"

 

Figment: "No! It's happening! Anything can happen with imagination! (Sings) Imagination, Imagination

A dream (A dream)

Can be (Can be)

A dream come true

With just that spark

From me and you

 

Imagination

One little spark, of inspiration

Imagination

Is at the heart, of all creation

Right at the start (The start) of everything that's new

One little spark, lights up for you!"

 

Me: "I want off this ride..."

 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wwr2dTUfpZA

[PlaysWithWolves]

Can someone savvy give me the dirty lowdown on this?

 

BRIEF-Atari Launches Capital Increase Of 5 Million Euros

Reuters Staff

 

April 18 (Reuters) - ATARI SA:

 

* ANNOUNCES LAUNCH OF CAPITAL INCREASE WORTH EUR 5 MILLION

* THE NEW SHARES WILL BE OBJECT OF REQUEST TO ENTER EURONEXT PARIS MARKET

* OPERATION VALUE IS AT 10 PERCENT OF CAPITAL
* PROCEEDS WILL BE USED FOR VALORISATION OF PORTFOLIO OF OVER 200 GAMES AND POSSIBLE RIGHTS ACQUISITION OPPORTUNITIES Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage: (Gdynia Newsroom)

 

 

 

 

Also: Only of tertiary relevance, but Piko Interactive acquired rights to some games from Atari SA. The games were recently released on Steam.

 

 

[godslabrat]

Can someone savvy give me the dirty lowdown on this?

 

 

 

Also: Only of tertiary relevance, but Piko Interactive acquired rights to some games from Atari SA. The games were recently released on Steam.

 

 

Not sure, the wording is a bit vague, but it does seem as if Atari has some European investors of some sort. Not a lot off detail as to who they are, what they're sponsoring, how much influence they've bought, or if anyone else in the room can see them.

 

Great if it's true, but Atari's biggest problem isn't money, oddly enough. It's lack of a product, lack of a market, lack of a willingness to take risk, product saturation, and so on. Being generous, I MIGHT be tempted to put "lack of money" on the list at #5. But when you don't have a plan, I don't view lack of money to execute the plan as necessarily a negative.

[carlsson]

Isn't this a standard re-emission of a shareholding company? Either they have existing investors willing to put more money into the company, or they're trying to seek new investors. They're diluting the total number of shares, but hopefully a cash injection spent on important curating the portfolio and acquisitation of other companies or assets, will maintain the share price.

 

5 million Euro won't buy them any major competitiors, but perhaps the kind of acquisitations they're planning are on the smaller scale.

[JBerel]

I'd say it would be good if they were raising funds to properly fund development of their box instead of a lame crowdfunding scheme, but it's still just a low end, Johnny-come-very-lately Steambox. I wonder if it's a purposely vague notice that their primary share holders are converting the recently and slightly increased value of their shares into more stock. That would jive with their recent pump and dump tactics and so-called promoters on these boards.

[+frankodragon]

That briefing is mostly in ALL CAPS so it's pretty much "meh." Chump change.

[Flojomojo]

Can someone savvy give me the dirty lowdown on this?

 

I'm not savvy, but I did look up "valorisation" in the dictionary. Could be a funny translation since Atari SA is headquartered in in Paris and their business announcement are typically in French. Seems like it can't hurt to boost that portfolio, though I wonder if there's a grander strategy behind it.

 

 

Those Piko games look old. Did anyone appreciate "classics" from Ocean the first time around? I vaguely remember Tunnel B1 because it got a Playstation port, which Gamespot scored 4.6 out of 10. Games only get better with age, right?

[carlsson]

So if they are valorizing their intellectual properties, is that the same thing that any 3rd party looking to license stuff (e.g. AtGames, but many others as well) will have to pay more for the rights because Atari already put investor money behind those properties? Or maybe it is the other way around, that IP will be cheaper to license since Atari anyway have some of the money it is worth financed through other means?

[Flojomojo]

So if they are valorizing their intellectual properties, is that the same thing that any 3rd party looking to license stuff (e.g. AtGames, but many others as well) will have to pay more for the rights because Atari already put investor money behind those properties? Or maybe it is the other way around, that IP will be cheaper to license since Atari anyway have some of the money it is worth financed through other means?

 

Heck if I know. Based on recent (10 years) performance, they only seem to have a few moves in their repertoire:

 

- license stuff out (t-shirts, keychains, branded plug-n-play)

- sell stuff off (buh bye Battlezone)

- try to remake things (Asteroids in many formats, RollerCoaster Tycoon)

- try some new ideas that neither appeal to their aging base nor attract new fans (casino gaming, fitness trackers, LGBT outreach via games)

- sue people

 

Their last press release is inscrutable to me. I found this to help me with the big words I don't understand. It seems likely that this is yet another of their moves which only make sense to short-term investors, not to anyone interested in proper growth, and certainly not an end user who used to enjoy some blocky video games. Whether this recent move is bold, or just desperate, probably depends on your perspective.

IP valorisation

The licensing of IP rights can generate additional income with little up-front investment and a relatively short incubation period. In order to avoid the underreporting of licensing fees and the misinterpretation of contract terms, any licensing programme should, however, be carefully outlined and meticulously monitored.

As an alternative to licensing, a company can consider selling its non-core IP rights. This decision will be all the more important if the company is involved in a transfer of assets, merger or acquisition. In short, non-core IP assets do not increase the company’s value, meaning they will be passed on to the acquirer without any kind of compensation. Selling them separately to a third party could thus constitute an additional source of income. Apart from a private sale at arms’ length, a business could also consider participating in IP auctions. Initially, such auctions were organised following bankruptcy or winding-up, but they are no longer limited to these circumstances.

Another (highly debated) means of valorising assets, in particular patents, is to pool them. A patent pool is an arrangement between several companies to share their patents or to license a portfolio of patents to third parties, making them available to the party that most needs them.

[Flojomojo]

Today in "Not My Atari," here's Eurogamer!

 

"People want a lot of answers" We interview Atari as it re-reveals its console / computer hybrid.

 

They're asking some good questions:

 

Who's the target audience for the VCS?

What makes it competitive? There's PCs, there's phones, which have all these features as well.

So they could wirelessly connect their Xbox or PlayStation controller to this? Any Bluebooth controller?

 

Go read it to see the text version of Michael Arzt squirm like a weasel.

 

On the other hand, why show this hardware now, without having those details?

Hopefully a couple of months from now when we're at E3, we will have a lot more to talk about - when a lot more deals have been done, and a lot more things have been locked down.

 

Does that mean you're no longer crowdfunding this?

Michael Arzt: I didn't say that! But the thing to understand about our approach to crowdfunding is that - it's not really so much crowdfunding as it is... there's a lot of ways to use crowdfunding. We're looking at this as an opportunity. It's about fan service, and it's about community. Taking a crowdfunding approach - the very first one, it's this wooden [box], it's going to be special, it's going to be about catering to our biggest, most nostalgic fans, and giving them an opportunity to give us feedback on this as we're building it, before it's too late and are locked and baked. And there's a lot of things we're not sure about that the crowdfunding process will give us an opportunity to do.

 

 

Wow, what a bunch of stuff. How about answering the question?

 

What about long term support? When you buy a console from Microsoft, Sony or Nintendo, you're buying a system that you know will last say four, five, six years with exclusive titles...

Michael Arzt: That's what we want too - to build something that's one and done makes no sense. A lot of things that we're trying to do are things that will, like I say, make it appealing to that younger audience and give it that life span. I'd love to be back here with you in five years talking about VCS 2 - that would be awesome. And if we do our job right, that could be happening. There's other things we could creatively with this design - do different colours and editions, things like that, which we'd love to do also. But you know, you've got to start somewhere.

 

 

You just went full Mike Kennedy. Never go full Mike Kennedy. Simple as that.

 

I could keep asking questions about the VCS, but I don't know how much you can openly answer right now. Like for example, third parties...

Michael Arzt: Yeah! We're talking with third-party publishers, and giving them the opportunity to... if some of them already have things that already run on Linux. Great - port them over, we'll give you a really favourable deal if you put them in our store. We're having those conversations. We're also saying, are you interested in taking a stab at one of our classic IPs?

Normally, and for the mega big classics like an Asteroids or a Centipede, those kind of [games] we'll typically do a licensing deal where there's an upfront payment - but for the vast majority of our titles? Someone could come to us and say 'I have an idea for Air Sea Battle', which is a seminal game, but Air Sea Battle can be anything - it doesn't have to be a literal remake of the game with modern graphics.

 

 

It goes on like this.

 

We've got members of the bizdev team that have been out there all week [at the Game Developers Conference] talking to people, and a lot of them are intrigued. The bigger ones tend to be more inclined to take the wait and see attitude - let's see what your audience looks like, lets see if it's worth porting our stuff to Linux - and so on. But the smaller guys, who see it as an opportunity to get their name on the map? [They're] going to be the ones that might bite. We invite everybody, and we'd love to talk to everybody, and there's nobody we wouldn't talk to.

 

Enough already. Feed him to the sharks!

 

 

The comments are fun, as expected.

 

 

 

 

[godslabrat]

 

 

 

- the very first one, it's this wooden [box], it's going to be special, it's going to be about catering to our biggest, most nostalgic fans,

 

 

That's literally all this is... a box. Atari has a box. It started out as a 3D render, then they converted it to an STL file and printed that box... but it's still a box. A box is the only part of this project that Atari can honestly say exists. Now, what they're also saying, is that with enough crowdfunding, they can buy some off-the-shelf devboards and slap them INTO that box. And maybe, they can hire someone to compile some old games onto open source software and maybe load it onto those boards, but.... and I can't say it clearly enough....

 

...The only thing Atari brings to the table is the fucking BOX.

 

That's why it's a shame that they changed the name, because calling it the "AtariBox" was completely on the nose. Now they want to talk colors and releases, without ever worrying about what goes IN the box.

 

Just make the box a Jag shell and be done with it.

[Flojomojo]

The notion that third party developers will want a piece is so RetroVGS.

 

This is interesting, too. Emphasis mine:

 

The first few people said, 'Vapourware' and so on. We felt it was really important [to show we were] continuing to work on it now we've got many more pieces in place since then. The pause was a really valuable thing for us, because we were able to fix the one thing that was the show stopper, which was quite frankly was, the controller.

We did not like the controller we had before, we did not like the partner we were working with, we did not like the business plan, we did not like the design. It did not fit with the other stuff. That was the thing that ultimately paused it there, but it was a great opportunity to [say] hey, we're paused now, we'll take a breath, let's do a top-to-bottom audit of everything else, right? There were things that were good, but we felt like if we do this to it, it'll be even better. Timing wise, we realised we're going forward with this, but it's not baked yet, so let's bake it so more.

 

Is it one thing, or four things?

 

And this?

 

We've got a lot of research that we've done, and a lot of calculated hunches that we've put forward in the way we're thinking about it, but the fans will tell us if those things are making sense or not. That's really, for this project - I can't speak to all crowdfunding [campaigns] - but that's what we want this one to do for us, to give us a dialogue with fans. And yeah, it's partly a proof of concept, but ultimately, what are we building? The guts of it - to be candid - it's a good laptop that has no keyboard and no screen. What we're doing with the software, and we're doing with the other stuff, that's the special stuff that Atari brings to it, but it's an attractive piece of consumer electronics that structurally is kinda straightforward.

 

[godslabrat]

"A Dialogue with Fans"

-In Socratic Format-

Fans: What is this thing, what is it supposed to do, why should we buy it?

 

Atari: Just wait, you'll see! No more questions!

 

~FIN~

[Flojomojo]

Atari: [drinks hemlock, declares bankruptcy, again]

[Dr Manhattan]

On the other hand, why show this hardware now, without having those details?

Hopefully a couple of months from now when we're at E3, we will have a lot more to talk about - when a lot more deals have been done, and a lot more things have been locked down.

Atari can afford to exhibit at E3? That's surprising. I expect the Atari Box shell will be displayed under glass, no software will be shown or announced, and the whole thing will be a hustle much like the Phantom Console I saw many years ago.