Matt_B

The problem for Atari, if that indeed is their plan, is that the margins on games consoles are pretty much negative, even when the volumes being sold are in the tens of millions. Nintendo might make a small profit because they're really good at making world class games with weaker hardware, but Sony and Microsoft are pretty much selling at a loss most of the time. The way to make big money from games consoles is in licensing the software, but Atari can't realistically do that if they're only selling 50,000 units a year. Let's face it, who is going to even port games to it, let alone make exclusives if the most they can sell is a few tens of thousand of copies? Even a good indie game can cost upwards of a million to make these days, so those sales just aren't going to cut it. While it might potentially be the case that you could put Steam on it and get some games that way, that's not going to help Atari's business case much.

Yeah, the UDOO BOLT is a realistic proposition for a media PC, but you're looking at the $400+ tiers if you want it to come with memory, a case and a power supply. With Atari presumably still aiming at the sub $250 bracket, you're looking at another level of cheap and nasty.

The target is pretty much arbitrary as, with Indieogogo's "flexible" funding, they didn't even need to meet the goal to get to keep the money. It's not an all-or-nothing deal like with Kickstarter.

The hot sauce will be supplied by Llamasoft. Be sure to let them know, because we haven't told them yet. We had the beef all lined up, but someone offered a cheaper cow at the last minute we're deciding whether to switch or not.

It's worth remembering that in 1995 Nintendo were a multi-billion dollar company with over a decade of continuous experience in the video games console business and people still gave them flak for overselling their product. Let's not forget the roasting that the Virtual Boy got around that time too for being an ill considered venture, and they actually had hardware for that to show too. Atari today have barely got two beans to rub together and, even if we're to credit with them still being the same company, have been out of the business for a couple of decades. They've simply not got the scope to do anything of significance wrong, and it's only conventional wisdom that they're going to fail.

I'd think the key thing with tacos is that you've got to work out your filling, your shell, and try the two in combination together at least once before selling them. Also, when taking orders, you should at most take half an hour to serve them. Fourteen months is right out. Oh, and pricing is key too. if you're going to charge 30% more than the quality branded outlets down the road you'd better make sure that yours have something unique going for them. If that all sounds like too much, maybe get into fajitas instead?

I make my own tacos too. There aren't many authentic Mexican restaurants in Australia for some reason.

I always had a sneaking suspicion that they'd keep selling it at the end of the campaign. Most do, and all the end really means is that you can't get a refund any more. Also, while they might have put the prices up for now, does anyone think that this is still going to be $399 if/when it gets to retail? Sure, they had to hike the prices up again to attempt to instill some sense or regret in those who didn't back it. However, getting back to the real world, there are already two games consoles of significantly higher spec at a lower price, so that's simply just not going to fly in the long run. I'd think that $250 tops including at least one controller is the absolute most that the market could bear, and under $200 - alongside the Shield TV and existing nettops - is probably where it'll be ultimately headed.

That's interesting, and this would be a first from Indiegogo if they actually did something about a campaign that's already finished with the money having been handed over. Some further investigation is called for.

7 hours to go and still that third million eludes them. It's pretty common to see a late rush to get in on a crowdfunded project, but in this case it seems to be almost exactly balanced out by those in a rush to get out.

Maybe someone could start a crowdfunding campaign for it?

They're allowed to add new perks and remove ones that haven't been claimed. It's just the ones that have been claimed that cannot be altered. So, if you've offered up an Atari watch and someone's bought it, tough luck. It's on there for all to see.

That's one of Indiegogo's few positives at work. They allow very little in the way of retrospective editing to campaigns, so if something is part of the initial pitch it must remain up there for all to see and Atari can't just weasel their way out of their associations with the product by cancelling the license. Quite what's going to happen when it comes to fulfillment is anyone's guess, but I'd speculate that they'll just be offered a non-Atari gameband instead. Failing that, Feargal may just fob everyone off with one of his Minecraft wristbands again.

Try to think of it this way. Either it'll come out and you can buy one later, with a much clearer idea of what you're getting, or it won't and you'll have saved your money.

Yeah, it doesn't tell us anything new. To people who aren't already under the impression that they're a penny stock without serious prospects for the future it might come across as somewhat negative though.

It's occurred to me that maybe they didn't mention his name until now because it's taken this long for them to put a signable contract in front of him?

In case you are in any doubt, check out the update where everyone gets a free upgrade to an M3 CPU and 16GB RAM.

Yeah, it's the same hardware but at a massively lower spec. You thought you were getting a super powerful mini-PC, well here's a cheap Atom tablet instead; hope you don't notice the difference. I wonder if Atari are considering fobbing backers off with a late switch to the Cherry Trail Atom too? It's about the only CPU that they could fit in that case without needing a major redesign for cooling and it'd probably have the performance to run Vault too. Yeah, and Atari haven't exactly given us a load of quality software in the past four years, have they? If you're expecting anything more than the same Linux version of Vault that's been out for a while, a bunch of bundled free apps and some shonky launcher on top of it, you're most likely going to be disappointed. And that's assuming that they can sort out the hardware.

I see the numbers have fallen off a cliff twice. The first after June 11 would roughly coincide with the fake footage story and the second, after June 21, with The Register posting up the full audio of that interview. I'm sure Atari will be thinking that their PR money was well spent.

If anyone's not cancelled their VCS orders yet, maybe they should talk a look at this as an alternative: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-world-s-most-powerful-pocket-sized-pc Basically, you can have a pocket-sized PC running Windows 10 with an M3 CPU, 16 GB RAM and as 128GB SSD all for a mere $189. That's totally legit, right? How can Indiegogo sleep at night with campaigns like that on their site?

That was his share of the erotic chatbot company, whatever it was called. He's got a 25% stake in Retro Computers Ltd. and we've all got our fingers crossed that he'll use it to vote out the current directors on Monday. It's obviously going to be far too late to get the product finished or any money returned to the backers, but at least nobody gets to walk away without the company finances coming under full scrutiny. And yeah, I don't think you can count on there being a potential white knight among Atari's shareholders who'll stick up for the backers if the VCS project goes South, be it Nolan or anyone else

Somewhat ironically, it was a dispute over the continued employment of a PR consultant, who was since made managing director because that's totally the skill set you need to replace an experienced games publisher, that led to the fatal split in the Vega Plus project. I'm not sure quite how much they were paying for her services, but it probably in the same ball park.

I'll hold my hand up as having put money down on that one. Still, that was largely based on the involvement of Chris Smith who was, and still is, one of the most trustworthy and knowledgeable guys in the Sinclair scene and totally the sort of person you could trust to get a project like that delivered. However, within a month of the crowdfunding campaign being wrapped up, he - and Paul Andrews, the guy who would be handling the business side of things - had been shown the door, and the whole project and half a million pounds was in the hands of the "erotic chatbot" people. It's at that moment I knew I'd f**ked up. Because no strings crowdfunding, especially Indiegogo, gives you absolutely no comeback against that, and the only thing I was going to get for my money was some quality eDrama. Maybe that's some more food for thought for anyone still wavering on the VCS?

I'll leap to the defence of AMD once more and say that the A10 is more than adequate for streaming and pretty much all uses you'd put a media PC to, with the obvious exception of modern AAA gaming. That's not to say that Atari won't manage to gimp it in some fashion or otherwise fail to deliver, but the underlying tech is easily good enough.

Maybe that's their fall back plan? If the engineering fails they'll just ship as solid plastic paperweights. Ah well, they'd be about as much use that way in the long run.