Matt_B

Yeah, Infogrames closed down their last games studio - Eden Games - in 2013 as part of the bankruptcy, so the armadillo is long gone. All that's left now is the empty shell with Atari's name on it.

Sure. It's not a huge amount of money in the grand scheme of things but it's still a lot to be spending on fresh air, and that's all that Atari have to show for the past three years.

Ah, imagine a pocket-sized machine you could use to play all those Atari classics from the 70s and 80s, listen to music, watch all the streaming video services, browse the internet and keep up with all your social media apps. You could even use the thing to make phone calls. 😄

Yeah, it's not that bad, but Devil's Turd was a meme waiting to happen. 😃

Phones need radios, speakers, microphones, cameras, GPS, gyroscopes, etc. that all add to the price and draw without doing anything to boost the processing capabilities, and you're capped at around the 20W mark by the need to preserve battery life and dissipate heat. A well-designed games console is basically just a big GPU with a smaller CPU and the bare minimum of everything else, and can consume around 200W when you plug it into the mains. Even at a third of the price it should be killing the phone when it comes to gaming and graphics. The VCS is just not a well-designed console. It's more of a mini PC that should be selling at no more than $200 if it ever gets to retail, which still seems rather doubtful given all that's gone on so far.

They both come with 8GB. However, that's not to say that the VCS is going to have enough RAM to run the same games well, and that's particularly true if it's going to be running generic Windows or Linux versions when the recommended spec for AAA gaming on the PC has been at least 16GB of system RAM and another 4GB of video RAM for the past few years. Rather, it'll be like getting those games to run on a cheap laptop and, as anyone who's actually done that will know, the amount of RAM you've got can be the least of your problems.

The irony being that such a device already exists in the shape of the Flashback X. Well, it covers the games side of things well enough. Sure, it's not a streaming device, but who cares about that when your TV has apps for all the popular services anyway?

Remember that PowerA are making the controllers. They won't be making anything like that number for Atari, but when they can use almost exactly the same components for all their Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft controllers there'll still be significant savings to be had.

Given that an early prototype of the modern controller was an Xbox controller with a sticker over the logo, I'd still be fairly confident that it's the guts of one inside a different shell.

Yeah, but 'weeks not months.' 😁

I might be a potential buyer when they get to eBay. You'd have to wait for the price to drop below $50 though.

Order now, and you might just get your currency in late 2022. 🤣🤣🤣

The Pi 4 is a massive upgrade. It's totally worth investing in one, even if you've already got a 3B+ setup that you like.

As ever, the legal department of Atari seems the most active part of the company. 😄

Yeah, you could send your money off and get nothing but bullshit back for the next couple of years. 😄

They're recycling something they've used before to cover up for the fact that they've nothing new to show. I can safely say it's deliberate, because it's not the first time they've done this. I doubt it'll be the last either.

Well, it's good news for the likes of Nintendo and Netflix now that everyone's stuck at home with nothing better to do than play games and watch movies. It's just a shame for Atari that they're only competing with either of those in their own minds.

I'd say it's more like one of those dogs that just dissolves into vapour when you try to pet it.

Hang on a moment. They've not actually said there will be 500 units, just that there are enough parts arriving to build that many. The chances are that there'll be considerably less than that number actually made, and that they'll only be good "for developers" because they'll be flaky as hell and ship without a completed OS.

Naah, it's saying that a unicorn can beat a midget pony whose main virtues are that it's cheap and doesn't eat much. It's certainly not quick. They've already come to the realization that their unicorn would get left for dust by an actual racehorse, even if it existed.

Atari certainly got out of the Gameband well before it finally went belly up. Still, it's pretty obvious now that even that decision was largely driven by the desire not to have to pay Feargal a cent more than they'd already thrown his way. Having previously interpreted it as a sign of the company being able to identify a project with a high failure risk, and distance themselves from it to protect their brand before matters came to a head, that was giving them way too much credit. Yep, they're even worse than I thought.

Thinking about it, they didnt mention Earth either. It could be the next Martian spring, which runs from Feb to Aug 2021.

My gripe with PowerA Switch controllers is that they are missing a lot of functionality compared to Nintendo ones. For three obvious examples, there's no Amiibo, no HD Rumble, and you can't just pop one on the USB lead to keep it charged. That makes them OK for some games, but sub-optimal for others. That's fair enough, I suppose, when you consider that they're a realively small company and can't afford to throw the tens of millions at designing a new controller that Nintendo would, but that means that the only way they can compete is by offering controllers that generally aren't as good for a lower price. Presumably the same goes for their Sony/Microsoft alternates, although I suspect they're working to much tighter margins with those. Still, props to them for managing to find a niche where they can survive alongside the big boys, which is something that Atari merely aspires to do with the new VCS, and in all likelihood will not succeed at.

I'm still massively sceptical of any potential it may have as a commercial product too, but so long as they make enough of them for me to be able to pick up a second hand one on the cheap, to do a custom job with, it's all good.

"Mike Kennedy has a shrine to tacos." I could actually believe that one. It's probably shaped like a giant Jaguar shell. 😀