racerx

I keep hoping the AA Facebook page will someday rise above the usual wasteland of "Yars' Revenge, amirite?" posts, but I posted the link there and got just one reply, literally "Yawn." The much-ballyhooed token release was at best incompetent, and at worst a pure pump and dump scam, and no one cares. Just keep buying that sweet, sweet merch. Makes me wonder if ol' PowerDubs doesn't have it right after all...if suckers are desperate to be separated from their money, oblige them.

"Atari" has hit a whole new low with their token shenanigans. It's fascinating to witness the depths of sleaze they're willing to plumb.

I don't know, but I'm amazed that the same generations that complain about the cost of housing/education/healthcare apparently don't have an issue paying real money for literally nothing. We fogies laughed at Supreme but it looks like they were on to something. This is genuinely marketing genius. We're now selling imaginary products that cost nothing to make, and charging more for imaginary scarcity. The kids are actually buying the emperor's new clothes. Sheer brilliance.

"Digital collectibles" have got to be the pet rock of the 21st century.

Yes, but those examples are collectible/valuable because people didn't collect them. Same with the original Star Wars toys that people didn't think to leave sealed. This crap goes immediately onto someone's shelf to gather dust. The sheer fact that people are buying them for that reason ensures they won't ever be worth much. It's just compulsive collecting.

I've already seen people salivating in the FB groups. I don't understand the urge to collect stuff that doesn't seem to have any collectible value, but they're out there.

The wife literally just sent this to me. Outside of a tiny nerd bubble, the rest of the world uses Atari synonymously with "obsolete."

How long can a company coast on a 40-year-old reputation selling products made by other companies? I get it...nostalgia's a helluva drug, but it can't be milked forever. At some point those of us who care(d) will be gone, and Atari hasn't really produced anything original and relevant since the Warner years.

"Ultra niche" is right. Those of us that are middle aged but never stopped gaming don't have much use for this cynical exercise.

Yeah, but it wasn't exactly a glowing article.

What news did I miss? Up over 27%, and normal volume is 300,000 and change.

Friendly ball-busting aside, there were always fun games in the arcade, 90's included. Still, "peak arcade" was definitely in the early 80's, and it's hard to describe how big it was to anyone that wasn't there. There were games in gas stations and outside the checkout at Kmart, for Pete's sake. Games like Pacman and Donkey Kong got breakfast cereals, Saturday morning cartoons, and bedsheets. Still, it was the song list that prompted the biggest *oof* from my inner fogey. I simply can't connect any of those with the arcade experience, at all. I was working on some machines in my arcade last night and jotted down the tracks that played while I worked. It's quite a difference a decade or so makes. 😉 Golden Earring: Twilight Zone Boston: Long Time Blue Oyster Cult: Burning for You Toto: Hold the Line Loverboy: Turn Me Loose Fleetwood Mac: Rhiannon Styx: Blue Collar Man Journey: Stone In Love Rolling Stones: Start Me Up Def Leppard: Photograph Billy Squire: In the Dark Foreigner: Hot Blooded

Yep. I genuinely feel bad for people that missed the good years.

I've got to hand it to Atari...most companies can only dream of attracting loyal customers with zero expectations.

Hang in there, big guy.

Look...it's a niche product. The idea of a doorstop was never intended to compete with mainstream doorstops.

Reddit is swift, and savage.

Inb4 zzip's "niche product" routine.

Game, Stream, And Connect Like Your Daughter's Old Laptop

That's what most people would've wanted, I'd imagine, because that would've given it a reason to actually exist. "Reimagined classics" was a big part of the original pitch, and I don't think stuff like the free-to-play-on-mobile Missile Command Recharged or the nearly 3-year-old-on-everything-else T4K is what people had in mind. What significant games other than Battlezone have they sold? The bigger issue is that lots of games people want are actually third party games, and Chesnais would've had to track down rights and pay licensing fees. So, yeah. It's taken them three years plus to crap out a gimped pc in a nostalgic case that brings nothing to the table that 95% of consumers can't already do with what they already own. Even at the uncompetitive pricing, they can't be making much on hardware, and the new focus on the "sandbox" aspect means they won't make much on the software side either. I can't think of a better case in recent times of a DOA product. It's no wonder they've had to dip further into the sleaze with the crypto aspect. There's only so many possible ways to try and eke low effort profits...

Yeah...it's nowhere near rare enough to reasonably command that kind of scratch. Wait for the bubble to burst.

Every transaction through Tramiel was just a change in ownership of the existing company. Granted, Tramiel just got the consumer half, but it was personnel, it was engineering, it was offices. It was a real company, that had a running line of continuity through the death throes of the JTS merger. Yes, this iteration is legally "Atari," but to equate the transfer of musty four-decade-old branding and IP with the buyout of an active company is silly. Moreover, the "masquerading" charge is because this is largely Infogrames with a name change. Is that "more Atari" than a sub-brand of Hasbro? Maybe, but it's certainly not enough to spark any kind of misplaced loyalty. It's literally a company completely unrelated to the Bushnell, Warner, and Tramiel led Atari(s), which draws us all the way back to one of the original Ataribox questions...would this fare well as an Infogrames GameBox with the exact same specs, with the exact same price, with the exact same streaming partners? I think the answer to that is clear, and it's why it's destined to sell poorly, and it's why it tends to get mocked here (and elsewhere).

Sad but true. I was already out of college when the Jag came out. I remember Jag ads in the gaming mags in the run up to release and being surprised that A) Atari still existed and B) would even attempt a console release at that point. It was just so obviously doomed from the beginning. That said, the wife got me one for $25 at a KayBee clearance and I picked up several more. I've had a lot of fun with them, but few people, consumers or developers, took it seriously during its lifetime.

To be fair, the tagline Game, Stream, and Connect Exactly Like You Already Can With The Hardware You Already Have wouldn't have had the same ring.