Matt_B

It's not quite that bad, but it's not good. We know they've chosen a 35W APU and there's going to be a serious engineering challenge getting one of those to work in a slimline case that's seemingly got no ventilation.

I'm pretty sure Sam used to wait until his partner companies went bankrupt before trying to claim their assets. Current Atari seem to want to be doing it while they're still solvent.

If nothing else, at least it's now clear why they've partnered up with PowerA; they're presumably that other manufacturer who was going to make the cheap knock offs. They've just got to do the design work all over, which presumably will consist of a little more than taking an Xbox controller and sticking a bit of tape over the logo.

Arzt probably thought that Feargal Mac was going to be the scapegoat too.

More likely, he just read all the comments about it pre-dating the already debunked Tempest 4K video.

Yeah, but you can bet that they won't have any money to refund any of the backers with if it fails to materialize.

Yes, that would be a scam. Mind you, if someone else were to acquire the Atari brand and this project the chances of getting a working one at the end of it might actually improve. Surely even he must realize that the VCS would have to be monumentally awful for someone as low as him in the YouTube food chain to be getting a review unit.

The video pre-dates the one of Tempest 4000 that they already admitted was the PC version. It wouldn't be massively sceptical to assume that this is just the PC version of Atari Vault, would it?

Meh. All I'm pointing out is that "scam" is usually reserved for people who are deliberately intending to take your money and give you nothing in return. The VCS is a bad deal more because of Atari's rank incompetence than any great risk of that. There's far more chance they'll blow all the money while failing to develop it, and even if they deliver something it's not going to be that good; it certainly won't be waiting fourteen months for, that's for sure.

"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." - Hanlon's Razor

Yeah, Atari have been very misleading; there's no dispute about that. Still, I'd think that to cross over into "scam" territory the onus is on us to show that their intention is not to deliver, and that's rather difficult given the fine print that says they've not really got anything to actually demonstrate yet and the very long time you'd have to wait. I'm much more happy with just pointing out how risky the project still is and that, even if Atari did manage to deliver on time and to spec, you'd still be getting something rather underwhelming. After all, if their intent is to deceive us that we're getting something special, why are they openly admitting that PowerA are making the controllers? That's more than enough honesty for me to be giving it a miss.

To be honest, I think that calling it a "scam" is a little too strong. Rather, it should be enough to just point out that crowdfunded hardware projects, especially those without a working prototype, are a proposition that always carries unqualifiable risks. And the mere fact that there's an Atari badge on this one doesn't do anything to mitigate against that. Indeed, you've only got to look at the Gameband to see just that. And whilst building a Linux PC in a novelty case might seem like low hanging fruit in comparison, there's still plenty of scope to mess this up. And that's without getting into things that Atari are promising that could only really materialize if they were to sell millions of them.

Ah, it's all finally clear. This has just been a massive shilling exercise for the company's one worthwhile product so we'll all go and buy it in the Steam sale.

Funnily enough, I had tacos for dinner last night. They were very tasty, and I didn't need to put the money down for them fourteen months before I got to eat them either.

Given that no actual hardware exists yet, any differences between the CE and TE are most likely a figment of Atari's imagination.

I'd just like to stress at this point that Kodi is perfectly legal and the team behind it would doubtless be more than happy if Atari were to include it and pre-package it with a load of legitimate streams. They just draw the line at being used for internet pirate TV which is, somewhat sadly, the use to which most people would put it.

Yeah, that's why this thing isn't going to get any exclusives and is unlikely to even get many native ports. A console needs sales in the millions to support a viable gaming ecosystem these days, and there's a heck of a long way to go to get there from 11,000 or so.

Yeah, the share price is pretty much meaningless. It took a nosedive a few years back and has been flatlining ever since. It's been a bit better this year than last, but I wouldn't read too much into the bumps. Getting back to the VCS, I doubt they're betting their shirts on it taking off enough to support its own ecosystem. If the crowdfunding numbers tell them that's not going to happen, they'll presumably have priced the hardware to make money on the margin and would fall back on existing software to fulfill their promises. You'll get Steam as your games store, Kodi as your media player, Dropbox as your cloud storage, Teamspeak for voice chat, etc.

You have to wait for the physical model rather than the vaporware one.

Presumably, every VCS made will be a special edition of some sort.

I think the mistake people are making with Atari at E3 is to assume that they'd attend as exhibitors rather than consumers.

Has anyone asked them whether Star Citizen will be coming to the VCS? I know it's probably not coming to anything any time soon, but much hilarity could ensue if they give one of their hopeful but ambiguous responses rather than a flat out no.

Linux isn't the problem. It's OK for gaming these days, and indeed the PC games industry was fully preparing to jump ship to it a few years back when it looked like Microsoft were trying to turn Windows into a closed platform. You might not get the full range of AAA games, but for indies and emulation you're giving away relatively little by using it. Similarly, the A10 isn't much of an issue either. It might be a somewhat mediocre CPU but for a sub-$200 computer there aren't exactly a plethora of more capable options to go for. It's just the combination of the two, on a platform curated by Atari and with over a year until it's due, that combine to make the whole thing a miserable proposition. Even if we're to assume that they can deliver the hardware on time, the chances of it getting any significant exclusive content seem remote.

It's not so much a change of CPU, but that they've finally pinned themselves down to a specific model. Suffice it to say that it's a bottom of the range one, but at least the P at the end means that it won't throttle within a couple of minutes of you starting a game. Or at least it won't if they can get the cooling right. With at least fourteen months to go until it ships, I'd be surprised if there's anything much locked down about the design apart from the case itself. However, when the absolute best case scenario at the end of that period is that Atari puts out a Linux HTPC in a novelty case that's only good for an occasional bit of lo-fi gaming, do you really need to go looking for red flags?

You want Oolite. Overall, I'm a bit surprised by the top ten so far. They're good games, but never ones that ever seemed amongst the very best on the ST to me. Also, where are Sensible Soccer, Kick Off 2, Dungeon Master, Oids, Carrier Command, Blood Money and Monkey Island? I'd think some of them would be in the top five, but there's obviously not enough room for all of them.