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New Atari Console that Ataribox?


Goochman

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I know I'm not the first to point it out, but...

 

Seeing their renders, I think...If ataribox has some powerful processor, wouldn't they also need some heavy duty heat dissipation? I know technology advances over time, but my PS3 feels about like a radiator when it's running, and that's with fans blazing...

 

Can't really tell by the renders what the case is made out of but it may be designed so that the case acts as heatsink. And if so it is the whole unit which is heatsink pretty much plus not surrounded in an enclosure which allows for plenty of heat dissipation.

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Man I really want to be positive. I also just want an update. Something. :(

 

Instead I should order some homebrews. Help me choose: I'm definitely preordering Draconian. Now I'm tore between... Anguna 2600, B*nq, and Astro Blaster for the 2nd and possibly 3rd pick.

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Man I really want to be positive. I also just want an update. Something. :( Instead I should order some homebrews. Help me choose: I'm definitely preordering Draconian. Now I'm tore between... Anguna 2600, B*nq, and Astro Blaster for the 2nd and possibly 3rd pick.

 

 

It's tough to go wrong with either B*nq or Astro Blaster... both are amazing arcade ports. It just depends on what genre you like better.

 

Anguna is a pretty cool game - there's a huge world to explore. I found the combat system to be a little finicky though.

 

I'm also partial to Super Cobra Arcade. But there's a bit of a bias there. ;)

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The Linux MintBox is passively cooled so no need for a fan. I am assuming this is pretty much what the Ataribox is. It even looks like it as well from the case.

 

http://www.fit-pc.com/web/products/mintbox/mintbox-2/

https://linuxmint.com/store_mintbox.php

http://www.fit-pc.com/web/products/mintbox/mintbox-specifications/

and BTW, you can install windows on it as well.

Edited by BiffsGamingVideos
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Wait, if it doesn't have a fan does that mean it's less powerful than the canceled Jaguar 2?

 

Atari did release a Jaguar CoJag version in the arcades.... Think Area 51 and maximum force. You are talking about the Jaguar Duo (2 in 1 combo).

 

Now I still have the Atari Jaguar Catbox from ICD (never used). I got it when I made Jammer CD video in 1994. I'll listen to FAIR offers.

Edited by BiffsGamingVideos
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Can't really tell by the renders what the case is made out of but it may be designed so that the case acts as heatsink. And if so it is the whole unit which is heatsink pretty much plus not surrounded in an enclosure which allows for plenty of heat dissipation.

 

casting something like that would cost a fortune, and plastic doesn't make good heatsinks (though there are hybrid materials, which cost a fortune) thermally its not going to have enough convection for too much power ... even my pi3 in a jag case with convection currents and heatsinks still has a significant heat rise once the internal space saturates .. that's not a deal breaker but I cant imagine a passively cooled machine with any amount of "can do" power in it

 

for the record I do thermal studies on passively cooled electronics all the time for work, one of the one's I did recently, the power dissipation + the density of the parts + the ambient rise of a hot ass summer day got hot enough that the copper of the circuit board delaminated from the base FR4, that was a fun report to write to the customer heh

 

in my garage this summer after the sun went down and the door was open for several hours, with a couple of high velocity fans going full blast, it would cool down to the mid 80's and my passively cooled radieon R5 240 would lock up within seconds of having to play 320p quality video streaming from comcast ... I eventually added a fan to it. and that card is only a peak of 50W

 

 

Man I really want to be positive. I also just want an update. Something. :( Instead I should order some homebrews. Help me choose: I'm definitely preordering Draconian. Now I'm tore between... Anguna 2600, B*nq, and Astro Blaster for the 2nd and possibly 3rd pick.

 

without updates we are free to run wild, once we have updates we can properly mock it

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The Linux MintBox is passively cooled so no need for a fan. I am assuming this is pretty much what the Ataribox is. It even looks like it as well from the case.

 

http://www.fit-pc.com/web/products/mintbox/mintbox-2/

https://linuxmint.com/store_mintbox.php

http://www.fit-pc.com/web/products/mintbox/mintbox-specifications/

and BTW, you can install windows on it as well.

 

yea the mint box has a properly designed cast aluminum case heatsink, we dont know what the bawx has, but its shape doesnt inspire confidence

 

ps its twice the price

 

ps ps, even the 599 model is about half the horsepower to run cuphead, a game my 2008 garage computer can do at 1280x1024 at an average of 28fps

Edited by Osgeld
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I'm placing my bets in the Xbox 360 power level camp. Bill raises a good point that the only reason the original PS4 and Xbox One had the power and form factor they did was because of the weight of Sony and Microsoft developing the hardware. Plus, look at the form factor of the Ataribox protoypes. Its tiny, there's no way in hell you can fit a Playstation 4 in that, even when you remove the disc drive. If I am wrong I will very gladly eat my words.

 

 

 

 

Seconded.

Those would be some sweet specs as you could do very high quality 2D and 3D gaming if that is the range the Ataribox is in. The XBOX 360 still is a very powerful system and I don't think that nearly all the potential of that system was tapped yet before putting it out to pasture, but that is the normal ebb and flow these days of trying to one up the other guy (kill you system early to stay one step ahead and to keep making the consumer purchase a new console).

 

I hope the Ataribox succeeds, because I think it'll help the whole retro gaming wave that's currently going on. I don't think it'll be as popular as the NES classic mini or the SNES classic mini, both by Nintendo, but It'll be nice to see it do well... I hope, especially if they promote it right.

 

Hopefully it'll be capable of playing all original Atari 2600 games. From what I've read, it'll play 100+ games. I wonder if they'll have something like Xbox Live, where you can purchase video games via Internet connection. That would be nice.

I hope so that the Ataribox succeeds as well. I have always rooted for Atari and am very excited for this new chapter for the Atari brand.

 

 

What I would like to see from the Ataribox is as follows:

  • Classic Atari consoles in emulation so that it is easy to play any of their old titles for all the different consoles without the need to own every console
  • Allow homebrew titles to be published to the console
  • Modern 2D games. The specs on this might not be capable of high 3D games but would be more than sufficient for groundbreaking 2D titles. 2D is very compelling and has been making a come back over the past few years.
Do these 3 things and Ataribox might actually be successful

 

 

That again is what I am asking for in a new Atari product. Just to clarify how I see that this could work.

  • Basically setup a marketplace to purchase the emulators for the systems systems that you want emulate and have ROMS available for purchase. That being said at least a 2600 emulator and selection of ROMS should be included out of with the purchase of the Ataribox. Also allow loading of your own ROM's as well.
  • Allow homebrews to be sold on the marketplace with a cut give to Atari for each sale. Also allow homebrews to be added to the marketplace for free purchase to encourage people who want to learn to program and want to get their game out there. Community involvement is key to building goodwill and gives a vested interest in the success of the product and helps to build a diverse library of new games and ideas that don't typically come out of big game publishing companies (XBOX live marketplace on the XBOX 360 was proof of this as is evidenced by the amazing indie titles its library).
  • Modern 2D gaming should be the focus of the system as this is supposed to be retro and 2D retro gaming has become a hot thing over the past few years but it hasn't been capitalized yet (this is the niche that Atari needs in order to set themselves apart from Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo as they cannot realistically hope to directly compete and survive in a head to head battle with those companies). If the specs are in the XBOX 360 range there will be a lot of potential for 3D gaming as well to satisfy the modern gaming tag that has been pitched as well as a selling point for the Ataribox. Heck even the specs were only on par with that of the original XBOX that is still a lot of system to work with especially for retro gaming.
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Those would be some sweet specs as you could do very high quality 2D and 3D gaming if that is the range the Ataribox is in. The XBOX 360 still is a very powerful system and I don't think that nearly all the potential of that system was tapped yet before putting it out to pasture

- The X360's GPU was usually estimated to be somewhere between nVidia 7800GT and 8800 GT.

- That kind of performance was phased out below $50 a loooong time ago.

 

- I think it's safe to assume that it's going to be at least something like that.

 

- That's of course assuming they will spend at least 25% of the price on the actual HW !

 

When I was playing with XNA on X360 some 5-7 years ago, I was quite surprised it had enough bandwidth to do 1080p with quite a few postprocessing shaders. So even a relatively modern look is possible on such HW (not that it's going to help against MS/Sony, of course!).

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- The X360's GPU was usually estimated to be somewhere between nVidia 7800GT and 8800 GT.

- That kind of performance was phased out below $50 a loooong time ago.

 

- I think it's safe to assume that it's going to be at least something like that.

 

- That's of course assuming they will spend at least 25% of the price on the actual HW !

 

When I was playing with XNA on X360 some 5-7 years ago, I was quite surprised it had enough bandwidth to do 1080p with quite a few postprocessing shaders. So even a relatively modern look is possible on such HW (not that it's going to help against MS/Sony, of course!).

Yeah, that is why I said that need to go with Modern 2D or 2.5D gaming retro gaming. They need a niche in order to set themselves apart from Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo as they cannot realistically hope to directly compete and survive in a head to head battle with those companies and I think that would be the niche they can make work for them. Good to hear from someone who programmed on the XBOX 360 that there is still life to be had from that hardware.

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Hell, I see amazing things written for the Atari 8 and 16 bit systems still. Seems to me the consoles switch generations just when the developers finally learn to truly pull some of the greatest perfomance out of them.

 

Speaking of this. Let's try to switch to positive mode. Maybe there is some weird Tech Karma God out there who loved his 2600 and then played E.T... and then made Atari pay. Eventually it decided Atari had suffered enough, and instead took away Spielberg's talent. Now maybe Atari can come out with a successful console... what would the Ataribox 2 look like?

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Have fun with that. I'm not participating in magical thinking.

I am wondering if there's another way to look at this, though. Everyone is (understandably) focusing on the user experience, the specs, the games, the price, what it will do for us.

I don't think it's farfetched to guess that maybe the end user isn't the "real" audience here. Just like with .com services, the end user is often just a means to an end, a way to quantify interest in the product so that the REAL audience, investors or advertisers or potential buyers or ??? will see the old brand differently.

That Motley Fool article (thanks leech) and the $$ stuff (thanks GoldLeader) recently posted got me thinking ...wouldn't Atari prefer to get rich quick via an investment infusion rather than stay poor slow via crowdfunding begging? Maybe they're smarter than they look from the outside?

Then again, Speaker Hat. Maybe they're just as clueless and desperate as they appear to be.

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That Motley Fool article (thanks leech) and the $$ stuff (thanks GoldLeader) recently posted got me thinking ...wouldn't Atari prefer to get rich quick via an investment infusion rather than stay poor slow via crowdfunding begging? Maybe they're smarter than they look from the outside?

 

Then again, Speaker Hat. Maybe they're just as clueless and desperate as they appear to be.

I don't think it's farfetched to guess that maybe the end user isn't the "real" audience here. Just like with .com services, the end user is often just a means to an end, a way to quantify interest in the product so that the REAL audience, investors or advertisers or potential buyers or ??? will see the old brand differently.

 

Ever since Feargal Mac Conuladh opened his mouth and proved himself incapable of not using the words 'brand' or 'branding' to an almost Tourette's Syndrome-like extent, I've had suspicions along these lines.

 

My take: for the principals behind AtariBoxCorp, Inc., the long game is to build brand equity, cash out, and move on to the next one. The gameband and speakerhat exist solely to provide potential investors with good-faith products showing that the company is trying really, really hard to get something to market while working on the Ataribox. The Ataribox is the carrot to get major investors in the door... Who, I am sure, will be thrilled with how the delivery of the first crowdfunded product went, and won't see this as history repeating itself.

 

Lived through the dot-bomb era watching exactly this sort of thing happen multiple times at the epicentre. There's more than a little similarity here.

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Have fun with that. I'm not participating in magical thinking.

 

I am wondering if there's another way to look at this, though. Everyone is (understandably) focusing on the user experience, the specs, the games, the price, what it will do for us.

 

I don't think it's farfetched to guess that maybe the end user isn't the "real" audience here. Just like with .com services, the end user is often just a means to an end, a way to quantify interest in the product so that the REAL audience, investors or advertisers or potential buyers or ??? will see the old brand differently.

 

but as a comeback story which people are right to be skeptical of, especially people with money on the line, I think they'd need to actually deliver an audience first before investors and advertisers got excited.

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At this point, can't we just give Atari, brand name and all to Albert? He's releasing more Atari stuff(homebrew games) than the actual company

I second this, can we start a indygogo to raise money to buy Atari. Give it to AL and beg for jobs. Ill mop floors for sure as long as it has an Atari logo on it.

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Any one notice this or already point this out? pulled this off ataribox.com

attachicon.gifATARIBOX conroller.PNG

looks like a re-purposed xbox 360 controller.

which I don't have a problem with, I prefer these controllers.

attachicon.gifxbox 360 controller.jpg

 

That's actually closer in design to the non-Duke S controller for the original Xbox.

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Any one notice this or already point this out? pulled this off ataribox.com

post-61918-0-16968600-1510762644.png

looks like a re-purposed xbox 360 controller.

Where exactly did you see this image on the ataribox.com website? There is very little on that that site (and I did check it again after readubg your post) and I do not see any pictures of any controller let alone the one you shared in your post. Also you cropped the top and bottom left off of your photo, so I am thinking this photo didn't really come from the ataribox.com website as you claim and that you are just stirring the pot with your post.

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I

so I am thinking this photo didn't really come from the ataribox.com website as you claim and that you are just stirring the pot with your post.


It is on the site. near the bottom center part of a larger image. this is the direct link on a CDN https://3quq2c38s24j2lmx9eb9g3yj-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/main-bottom-2-1.png

But it's just a generic controller.
https://www.amazon.com/Speedlink-Torid-Gamepad-Wireless-Pc/dp/B014R4E8IE

Edited by The Historian
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