New Atari Console that Ataribox?

[New Atari Console that Ataribox?]

I've always been of the opinion that they'll probably deliver something. It's just that there are risks of failure or delays when so little has already been done.

 

The more that the project diverges from being a PC made of out off-the-shelf parts and running free software, the greater the risk of non-delivery becomes too. Atari simply don't have the capabilities in house to develop unique hardware and software, nor the money to probably fund anyone who they farm it out to. Or at least they aren't able to do so to anything like the same extent as the likes of Microsoft, Nintendo or Sony.

 

Also, without there being a fully working prototype yet, they're in the position that they've got to pretty much get everything right first time when they finally get around to making one. There probably won't be enough slack in the schedule or cash in the bank to go through too many cycles of refinement either, so the chances are that they'll be shipping the first thing that works and you'll have to live with any rough edges (hopefully only of the metaphorical variety) that it has.

 

The controllers might seem a safer bet, in that the technology in them is comparatively simple, but there'd still be a risk of non-delivery if the console hardware itself founders and drags the whole project down. They're also completely undemonstrated as of yet, and it's not clear what hardware or games the Retro controller would work with outside the VCS. I'd think it probable that the Modern controller will effectively be an existing XInput controller in a custom case, so it would be more useful, although that's not yet confirmed.

[New Atari Console that Ataribox?]

Yeah, the original Xbox was built like a tank. It's the 360 that looks like it was engineered by Rube Goldberg.

[New Atari Console that Ataribox?]

To be fair to Rob Wyatt, he's not exactly got to deliver the moon on a stick here. It's just the specs of an underwhelming off-the-shelf PC in a custom case, and the only serious technical issue should be with the cooling.

 

That said, his record when it comes to dealing with stubborn, technically ignorant and penny-pinching management may give cause for some concern, because he's bound to get another large dose of that with Atari.

[New Atari Console that Ataribox?]

Yeah, you can wish them all the best for the project but that won't change the fact that the business case is terrible and that the technical side isn't even at the working prototype stage yet.

 

On the plus side, I do think the design of the case is quite nice but they really ought to have more than that and some mocked-up footage to show for something that's been in development for a year.

[New Atari Console that Ataribox?]

Now that Tempest 4000 is out, you can get something of the feel of the VCS by playing it on your PC or a suitable console and positioning a random piece of old Atari hardware next to the TV.

 

Any takers?

[New Atari Console that Ataribox?]

While I am weary of the AVCS. I do believe that they will be somewhere in between. I do think they will deliver something to the backers.

 

I expect it'll be at about the same level as the GCW Zero. That shipped, got a couple of years of indifferent support mostly consisting of ports of free games and emulators, and was then pretty much abandoned by its makers. There are still a few people who use them, including some who'd even swear by them, but the overall effect on the video games market was barely a ripple.

 

Of course, there's still scope for things to turn into a hilarious car crash full of delays and recriminations, so I'm sure there will be at least another year's worth of gourmet Mexican dining to look forward to.

[New Atari Console that Ataribox?]

I'd suggest the Novatio, Vega Plus, Gamestick, Pandora, GCW Zero, GPD Win for a broad spread of crowdfunded consoles and their issues.

 

Quite what categories you put them in are another matter though. The latter three are arguably limited successes even, as they all shipped and have their fans. None of them have anything like what Atari are promising with native ports of commercial games though, as they all just piggybacked existing software platforms.

[New Atari Console that Ataribox?]

I want a survey to cross reference ataribawks backers and people who insist on using uber delux digital signal cables. There's got to be a common thread in people who think they're being smart when they do dumb things.

 

That's an unfair comparison.

 

I don't think you'll find anyone prepared to put their money down for a signal cable that they'll only get the following year.

[New Atari Console that Ataribox?]

Did I miss something? Atari just published Llamasoft's "Tempest 4000" on three platforms today.

 

Yeah, they settled their differences eventually. We could have had it two years earlier if they'd not taken the sue-first-ask-questions-later approach though.

[New Atari Console that Ataribox?]

You can certainly run Windows 10 on some low spec hardware. For what it's worth, my main HTPC is also based on an A10 (the 2012 vintage model) and it's reasonably snappy. I was never going to render HD videos on it, and its days of playing current AAA games might be long gone, but it's still more than adequate for media functionality.

 

Rather, the issue with the VCS is that it doesn't sound like they're going to set up the hardware to make it easy for you. If it's got a secure bootloader that won't let you install anything on the internal eMMC, you'll be reliant on running it from an external USB drive and even that'll probably require some sort of hack.

 

And yeah, even if you could access the eMMC, 32GB is a bit tight. You could fit Windows 10 on there, but only just and there'd be very little room left for software. You'd also have to be quite careful about managing the space, because even the automatically downloaded updates would probably fill it up quite soon.

 

The bottom line is that you shouldn't expect this to be a great Windows machine. It might still be OK at running Linux though.

[New Atari Console that Ataribox?]

Meh...it's an X86 PC, you can install Windows on it.

 

Probably.

 

What was said in the Q&A suggests that they're not intending the user to be able to put their own OS on the internal eMMC at all and that even Ubuntu on an external drive is going to need some modifications to boot up.

 

That may of course turn out to be complete hogwash, but I wouldn't bank on this thing letting you install Windows easily or running it well. Especially so when it's not even a thing yet.

[New Atari Console that Ataribox?]

 

Now has what? Not sure what you were referring to here..

 

When I was comparing it to the Switch before, I was talking about RAM..... You brought up the point that specs mean nothing if there are no enticing exclusive games on the system, and I agreed with that.

Then I went and tried to make the point that the PS4 has basically no enticing exclusives itself, and yet it's sold over like 70 million units or something crazy like that...

 

But anyway, who knows... The other thing I was thinking is, maybe Atari is trying to cater to the HTPC market.

 

Sure, the PS4 has no enticing exclusives if you'll overlook The Last of Us, Uncharted, Killzone, Little Big Planet, Horizon: Zero Dawn, Bloodborne, God of War, Gran Turismo, etc.

 

Maybe none of them do it for you, which is fair enough, but they'll still sell millions of consoles to other people. The VCS on the other hand, will seemingly have no exclusives at all; just games you can play on other systems, and will probably work better on other systems too.

 

As for the HTPC market, I'd think that it rather falls between two stools. Either you're looking for something to play games on, in which case it's marginal; the A10 was OK for a gaming HTPC five years back but most people who built one then have upgraded or are looking to do so now. Or, alternatively, you're looking for a mostly media playback machine in which case there are ARM or Atom based systems already on the market that'll do the job much more cheaply. Those are also generally good enough for emulators and a lot of indie games too, so the VCS will have to offer something as yet unannounced to make a case for itself there.

[New Atari Console that Ataribox?]

I wasn't referring to the vintage games market. I'm talking about people avoiding the Jaguar in 1995 because they knew Atari was washed up at that point, versus people actually getting excited about the VCS despite the current "Atari" only being a ghost of that shadow.

 

To be fair, only 11,000 have so far signed up for the VCS. Given that even the Jaguar sold more like 250,000, it'd seem like the Atari brand is at an all time low.

[New Atari Console that Ataribox?]

I'd think that what it might come down to is that, while other products can be put down as merely delayed due to technical issues, there's definitely no way that the Atari Gameband can be delivered with an expired license.

 

Well, either that or IGG have noticed what a high profile failure it's turned into and want to bump it off into oblivion before it affects their future business and without leaving too many reasons for disgruntled backers to keep complaining about it.

[New Atari Console that Ataribox?]

 

Indiegogo is refunding [Atari] Gameband pledges, claiming they "determined this campaign didn't comply with our Terms of Use."

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/shittykickstarters/comments/8z6iox/id_like_your_opinion_on_my_shitty_contribution/

 

This explains why the Gameband Indiegogo page erased all amount raised a few weeks ago. The total amount you see there now is the total amount raised on Kickstarter alone (hover your mouse over the question mark to see that notification) https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/gameband-the-world-s-most-powerful-smartwatch/x/12536588#/

 

 

That's good to see from Indiegogo.

 

Still, I wonder where the refund money is coming from. Was Feargal good enough to give it back, or did they have to dip into their own pockets to avoid a PR disaster?

 

This could also be an interesting precedent for certain other crowdfunding campaigns that have gone pear shaped.

[New Atari Console that Ataribox?]

To be fair, in the 90s they had to make cutting edge custom chips with features unavailable in existing hardware. Nowadays, all they have to do is saw down a cheap laptop board and figure out how to keep it cool.

Sure, there's still scope to mess things up badly, but they shouldn't need a big R&D budget for it.

[New Atari Console that Ataribox?]

I'd suspect that most fully funded projects on Indiegogo do eventually come out but that's because they're things like art, film, music and book projects where people really just want the money to get them done and aren't raising enough for it to be a worthwhile scam. There might be a few at the fringes of those fields where the complexity of the project starts to become an issue but they're generally seen as what crowdfunding is good for.

 

On the other hand, Kickstarter correctly identified electronic hardware projects fairly early on as being much more likely to fail due to the large sums of money required, the technical challenges in delivering them, and the tendencies to oversell what people are capable of making. Insisting on a working prototype helps weed out a lot of the dreamers and scammers, but there's still a lot that can go wrong.

 

Indiegogo, on the other hand, saw all that and thought they'd just keep taking the money. And, given the way they've been able to wash their hands of all the failure on their site for several years, it would seem to be working for them.

[New Atari Console that Ataribox?]

That SMB clone even rips off the music. Listen carefully at 3:38. It sounds like some noob rock band's trying to play the Super Mario World 'stage cleared' tune. And that fake couple. I would assume they would just go to bed and make love instead let alone play that thing.

 

The game is Secret Maryo Chronicles. It's not a part of the OTON project and they appear to have co-opted it without permission.

 

It's a not a bad game, for what it's worth. They just wanted to make something as close to a Mario game as possible without infringing any of Nintendo's IP, so the resemblance is entirely intentional. If you fancy giving it a go, you can get it as a free download from their offiical site.

 

http://secretmaryo.org/

[New Atari Console that Ataribox?]

That OTON video is well worth watching for anyone who thinks that Indiegogo have any meaningful rules as to what can be put on their site.

[New Atari Console that Ataribox?]

These guys also called a run of the mill Linux box a console, not that it did them much good:

 

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/novatio-modular-gaming-console-based-on-linux/x/9288846#/

[New Atari Console that Ataribox?]

I'd think that they could justifiably have said that they don't need a prototype for anything but the manufacturing of the production hardware, which would allow them to put it off for a few more months. Realistically, with it just being off-the-shelf PC hardware, they could develop and test all the system software, games and controllers without one, and still get it out in a year or so. It wouldn't be suitable for Kickstarter on account of that, but it'd still make sense as a project.

 

That said, if that was what they were doing, they should have come out and said so rather than just waffle their way through interviews, mock up footage and generally try to give the impression that things were far more advanced than they actually were. They might have found that a few people would still be happy to pre-order on the basis of an empty shell, but I'd think that rather a lot of others might have said that they were being rather premature in asking people to put their money down now.

[New Atari Console that Ataribox?]

I believe intangible is another word for immaterial, i.e. the various trademarks and intellectual properties they actually own, which are included as assets in the balance sheet. Usually you have a valuation made by some external party to determine the value of your immaterial rights, or you do one of own and hope your auditor and the tax office accepts it.

 

Yes, it just means they have no physical form. Given that they're pretty much an IP holding company, you'd expect that to make up the bulk of their assets. Heck, even a 99% complete video game is an intangible asset and only becomes a current one when it's released.

[New Atari Console that Ataribox?]

I think no one in their right mind would port to the VCS, but porting to Linux on Steam which has an estimated userbase of between 1 and 2 million is generally a pretty solid choice. The real question is the VCS store. I doubt even VCS owners will buy from the VCS store over Steam.

 

Yeah, and the Ouya was again in a similar spot. Porting games to Android, with its userbase in the billions, was a no brainer, but the extra effort to put them on the Ouya storefront to reach just a few tens of thousands just wasn't worth it.

[New Atari Console that Ataribox?]

Whatever numbers you might get on Steam probably aren't too applicable to the VCS as, on the one hand, you've got a userbase in the hundreds of millions for Steam, versus about 11,000 promised at the moment for the VCS. Maybe the latter could get into the high tens of thousands with a retail release, but without anything confirmed yet even that's not something that a potential developer could count upon.

 

Raking over the coals of the Ouya, which sold hardware in the tens of thousands, the most successful game sold just 7000 units. The median figure is probably a lot less than that too; we're maybe looking at three figures, possibly even two.

 

And again, not every indie game is made in spare time and out of love. Games like The Witness and Monument Valley, to give concrete examples, cost upwards of a million dollars to make. For people whose time is money and who have bills to pay, ports to the VCS won't be looking too viable.

[New Atari Console that Ataribox?]

The problem with using an APU for gaming is that - with CPU and GPU sharing the same bus - it's bottlenecked by the memory, so you really need the fastest dual channel RAM you can get. Sony and Microsoft both recognized this and went with custom solutions for their current generation consoles; the former uses GDDR5 RAM, where the latter has a substantial cache of ESRAM.

 

If Atari are just going to stick the cheapest 4GB single-channel chips they can get their hands on, there's going to be an even bigger gulf in performance than people might have been expecting.