Matt_B

I originally thought that the reputational risk for not delivering would mean that Atari have to crap out some hardware at some point. Then I thought "what reputation?" 🤔

Does anyone else think this might be turning into a bit of a horror movie?

It's enough to make you wonder about anything else you might hear on there. I can only speculate, but 24-hour business news channels probably need a heck of a lot of filler content.

And when they do say "I" they're almost always just taking credit for other people's work.

PAL tacos are also slightly slower, look a bit squished and are prone to rolling over when eaten in NTSC countries.

Ah well, at least the Raspberry Pi has come on leaps and bounds in that time.

Maybe Atari could get the VCAss on one of those obscure cable channels that try to sell stuff like healing crystals and multi-function kitchen gadgets? That said, even they have to follow some rules and can't just advertise things that might exist at some unspecified time in the future.

The funny thing is, Sega are probably doing better as a business nowadays than back when they made consoles and arcade games. It's just that resorts, pachinko and third-party games publishing isn't nearly as sexy or high-profile, especially outside Japan. Also, getting back into the console business nowadays - at least properly rather than by making plug-and-play retro machines - is an astronomically expensive business. Sony wrote down about $3 billion for the development of the PS3, and Microsoft $100 million for the Xbox 1 controller alone, to give a couple of examples. On the sort of chump change Atari are operating with, it's either off-the-shelf tech in a new case or don't bother.

Mario Kart 8, at least at 50cc with the driver aids turned on, is pretty casual. However, it plays like a sim racer next to the mobile phone game. You'd practically have to be in a deep coma not to win a race on it.

When you look at the numbers on the verical axis, it's not like they'd be doing well if the line was trending upwards either.

Yeah, it's yet another half-baked attempt to jump on a bandwagon that's already long departed, and with a couple of bad games that next to nobody still plays to boot. As if collecting Cryptokitties wasn't mad enough, who is going to want to trade items for a fortune in the bad mobile version of Rollercoaster Tycoon?

Retail supposedly isn't until March, so they can hide behind that excuse for a bit longer. As for the pre-orders, would you want your postman to know you'd put the cash down for one? Generic packaging is clearly the way to go. 😀

Sure, it won't be unfinished. They'd need had to have actually started something to call it that. 😁 Maybe their plan is to send out boxes of random loose parts and see if anyone can assemble them into a working machine?

When the big boys take upwards of five years, spend hundreds of millions and hire thousands of people to make a console, there's only so much a two bit operation like Atari can do like them. Mind you, doing it all behind closed doors would have given them the option of quietly canning it.

Not that I'd want to give Atari any ideas, but someone is actually working on a light gun that'll work with modern TVs. It's on that other crowdfunding site. The one that makes people offer up actual prototype hardware: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sindenlightgun/the-sinden-lightgun

I wouldn't say that they're common, but there are enough multi-million dollar machines with them around that are going to have to be well and truly run into the ground before anyone thinks of buying the newer model that comes with a USB port or Ethernet. And yes, you can add one to a regular desktop PC for the price of a $5 plate and cable but they're a relatively rare sight on a NUC.

The presence of the COM port suggests that this thing is designed for sticking in factories where you might potentially need one to talk to an antiquated piece of machinery. Swap it out for a couple of old school joystick ports and you've got a better retro gaming box than anything Atari is ever likely to make though. Nice work ASRock.

You can't beat Tracy the Taco for badges:

I'm only surprised that there isn't a "termination with extreme prejudice" clause.

They could just sell the box and let people put their own hardware in it. Or maybe just stickers that people could put on their own boxes.

APU = Accelerated Processing Unit It might have been an acronym used for other things in the past (not least the Auxiliary Power Unit in a jet airliner) but AMD have officially been branding their combined CPU/GPUs as APUs ever since they first launched the A series back in 2011. As for Atari, I guess they're finally using the chip that everyone said they should have been using a year ago. It's totally not just an excuse to kick the can down the road for another six months, honest.

It might just be the font, but I first read that as "Game Stream Conned Like never before!" which would be strangely appropriate.

Was it just me who expected it to be based on Raining Blood by Slayer before listening? Anyway, it's good to see that despite me taking a month or so off, Atari have literally no more progress to show.

Yeah, the PC version has issues with the controls and high refresh rate monitors, but nothing that should bother you if you use a controller and cap it at 60 Hz A patch is apparently in the works, but they're a 2-person studio, so it may be a while before it drops.