Paul Slocum

Latest Fred Cheese interview where he was vaguely responding to questions. The Atari VCS stuff is at the end and it's the same old BS: https://youtu.be/fKuf19jUtRg?t=2481 In his previous interview he said they're "shooting for the end of the year" which would be a 10-11 month delay from the last "weeks not months" delivery date, and in this interview he says: "China was shut down for many many weeks" ..... "at the end of the day we're talking what? 6 months delay?" He doesn't seem to know much more about the project than we do.

I assumed they were just trolling to force Atari to respond.

Atari claimed they were making 500 consoles but needed so many for their developers and industry partners that they couldn't send any to backers, and yet they haven't announced a single "developer" other than Antstream! For a long time they kept claiming they had a bunch of developers that they were about to announce, but now they won't even confirm that Tempest 4000 is still coming to the console. There's just no way they need to send hundreds of consoles to mystery industry partners instead of backers. Especially when it's literally just an x86 PC running Debian. And it's not just the lawsuit, it's that they keep using language that makes it sound like they might not even complete the project this year. Plus the fact that no other computer company is able to build a computer like they're building for nearly as cheap. I'm in the market for a computer like that and I can't find a pre-built computer anywhere that's remotely comparable in price and power. There are a number of companies building single board Ryzen computers that are almost identical to the computer Atari is building. If it's somehow magically possible to build the same thing in low quantities and sell them for $150 less than all the competition, then Atari would have very thin margins and can't afford any unexpected expenses or inefficiencies, such as multiple lawsuits, delays, and changing engineering teams. There are a lot of indications that this project may be truly falling apart.

Backers can now rest easy because Atari has officially confirmed that the Atari VCS has passed the threshold of being "more of a when than an if". Also good to know that at least somebody is having fun playing a VCS even if it's not me or a reputable journalist.

To be clear, I still totally think these guys are slimeballs and borderline criminals regardless, I just don't think they set out to fail. And I don't see how launching a crowdfunding campaign for a console would have helped sell the company unless the console actually came out and did well. Most of us immediately thought that a company like Atari using crowdfunding for this console was super sketchy, and I'm pretty sure most investors would have thought the same.

I personally just feel this situation fits better with gross incompetence than planned fraud. It's really easy to imagine these idiots massively underestimating how much it would cost to build these things, especially since no real technical work had been completed on the project at the time of the IGG campaign (even though Atari tried to make it look like they had a working prototype). I could definitely see them choosing the original pricing based on a trip to PC Parts Picker, thinking that a small company with no hardware experience can sell a low quantity specialty computer for the same price as mass produced form factor PC parts by companies like Asus and Gigabyte. The more research I do into comparable Ryzen single board computers that are available, the more I'm convinced that it's too expensive for what they're charging. The Kickstarter'd Udoo Bolt V3 is still the closest comparable computer I've found at $330 without RAM, case, or power supply, and it's a tad slower than the VCS. All the available Ryzen single board computers are in the $400-$600 price range when configured similarly to the $250 Atari VCS 400 base model. I also found this computer that uses the exact same Ryzen 1606G as the VCS (starts at $499 without RAM or storage, and it's been out for a year): https://mitxpc.com/products/ibox-r1000m

They say they're optimistic, but somehow they don't sound so optimistic...

In this new interview at 10:08 Fred says that for the VCS they are "shooting for the end of the year". So much for July! https://www.redeye.se/video/event-presentation/788059/atari-ceo-frederic-chesnais-presenting-at-gaming-day-2020

I noticed they're now saying the VCS is comparable to the PS4 after previously saying it was more like the Switch: also Atari's now taking swipes at IGG:

The Register's latest scalding hot take, featuring info originating from this thread: https://www.theregister.com/2020/06/03/atari_wages_lawsuit_default_judgment/

Also I don't think that person works for Atari, they seem deranged: https://www.reddit.com/r/Atari_VCS_Official/comments/g6orhk/interview_of_fc/

Definitely not, Atari and its supporters are the bullies. Atari only calls out and deletes people who are negative about the console, everybody else gets a pass to be a jerk. It's ridiculous, they act like people are big assholes for being angry that they haven't received what they paid for a year after the delivery date.

Pages and pages of questions with no response...... but then Atari responds!

I've been starting to wonder if the problem is that the VCS consoles are too expensive to produce, and Atari's strategy is basically to delay until they find a way to reduce the cost or until the parts age enough to bring the prices down. Every comparable Ryzen computer that I can find costs a lot more than $250. The cheapest and probably best comparison is the Udoo Bolt board, which costs $332 and doesn't come with RAM, a case, or a power supply. It has an on-board Arduino but that's at most a $15 addition. Udoo seems like a pretty competent and reputable company with multiple successful/delivered Kickstarters. How is incompetent Atari now going to do the same thing but a whole lot cheaper? https://shop.udoo.org/products/bolt.html Every other comparable Ryzen computer I can find costs a lot more. Granted some of these are probably relatively small production runs, but so is the Atari VCS: https://www.onlogic.com/ml100g-40/ The cheapest one from SimplyNUC has Vega 6 graphics so it's a little more powerful than the VCS, but it's also almost $700. https://simplynuc.com/sequoia/ Here's a handheld console based on the Ryzen. This has a camera and screen, but even if you deduct those it's still significantly more than the VCS: https://www.smachz.com/shop/products/602_621-604-608-622-611-623-624-625-619-612

Looks like it, here's the log but I can't see any of the actual documents: https://www.pacermonitor.com/public/case/33315895/Tin_Giant,_LLC_et_al_v_ATARI_GAMEBOX,_LLC

They totally take everything Atari says at face value. I guess they keep overlooking the obvious because they can't admit to themselves that they made a bad decision backing the project and/or that their beloved brand has turned into shit. This is just from the comments on the Atari VCS official Facebook page:

Huh? That's my point -- that it's not complete and Atari is just using Covid as an excuse. The original ship date for the Atari VCS was July 2019, and we still don't even have an estimate of when it will ship. The original release date for the TurboGrafx Mini was March 2020, and although the US version was delayed for 2 months, it's done now. Previously Atari kept acting like the VCS was complete and about to ship, then there's some excuse about why the shipping date got blown.

I jumped the gun on this one before, but now the Covid-delayed TurboGrafx Mini is officially arriving in the U.S. this week: https://www.engadget.com/konami-turbografx-16-mini-may-22-release-date-194516277.html Every Covid-delayed project I was monitoring is now available, and still Atari can't even provide a delivery window estimate. Last time they said anything on Facebook, it was "probably this year".

Just pointing out that the Plutonium Pirates game allegedly coming to the VCS was scheduled to have been released in 2018 but has been vaporware so far. The perfect game partner for Atari! https://pixel.lu/plutonium-pirates/

Atari running a bank, what could possibly go wrong?

Note that the TurboGrafx 16 Mini which was delayed "indefinitely" 3 weeks ago due to COVID-19 is now available some places in Japan. New Apple products started shipping this week. Even with everything going on, Atari's extreme delays due to COVID are starting to look ridiculous.

This is the best part, they have to send the 500 units to their hundreds of developers:

Touché!

Looks like Atari is launching another crowdfunding campaign for their cryptocurrency!? The site seems to be down now, but screenshots are from earlier on https://www.atarichain.com/ ... \

I wouldn't be surprised if they hand-built about 50 and sent them to the most vocal backers. How would anybody know how many were delivered? It will be interesting to see if what they send out has the cheap shiny prototype finish or if it's actually the finished product.