JaqenHghar

So would it be accurate then to say that you don't care if they miss deadlines or show progress or indeed ship at all because you don't have a dog in this fight? That's a perfectly valid position. Though it's not clear then why you would bother making excuses for them. Look at it this way: you say you've done product development. As it stands now (not if/when they ship), would you hire this team given their track record? (I'm guessing the answer would probably be depends on what they've managed to learn over the course of the project. But even then they do seem to be slow learners.) I can't speak for people being against it from day 1, since I wasn't one of them. I'm still not against the concept. But if you want some insight into the minds of those who do care, I guess the reason I care is that it's sad that they are tarnishing the name with their apparent incompetence. I'm not indignant. I don't own the brand. It's just sad. Like seeing the disheveled mugshot in the news of a fondly-remembered childhood idol you haven't really thought about in 20 years. I know "old" Atari wasn't perfect, but (a) rose-tinted glasses on the rearview mirror and (b) if they were so deceptive back then, I managed to be blissfully unaware of it. If your product is nostalgia, it would be nice not to squander the good will it accumulated.

No mistake here, but you seem to be presenting simultaneously opposite arguments in their defense. On one side: novel development is not a straight line, so you have to forgive them for missing deadlines. On the other: this isn't novel development, so there's no need to show progress. So is it novel development or not? Anyway the product is ultimately in the end supposed to be a physical thing, not just an ephemeral idea of nostalgia. Nostalgia is what got people to put down money for the physical thing. Since then Atari has multiple times over the span of years claimed they have finished this "no brainer" physical thing and it's ready to ship, and then another year ticks by. Do you not see that this is the problem? When deception keeps happening people start to get more insistent on needing to see evidence. This expectation for evidence didn't start in a vacuum. If you had a kid who continued to not brush their teeth yet tell you they did, you'd start wanting to see some proof next time they claimed it, right? Same idea. BTW Infogrames lack of track record with physical hardware is relevant insofar as it reinforces doubts already seeded by their "fake it 'til you make it" practices. It's not to say a company without a hardware track record is automatically untrustworthy.

By that line of reasoning I'm also a hypothetical unconsole manufacturer. I also have a great novel in my head I've been meaning to write.

It goes beyond product development uncertainties. Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't Atari claim they were about to ship in something like Dec 2018 but then cancel with a few weeks to go to "tweak" the product to "make it even better"? Since then I believe they've had two new hardware design teams and a whole new board. So what happened to this alleged Mk I from 2018? Did it even exist? If it just got "tweaked" to support a faster processor, what happened to the OS from the 2018 version that was about to ship? Weren't the processors compatible? The 2018 OS should've run on the 2020 prototype, just faster, right? So why did we barely see the OS until this year, with version numbers on the videos and screen itself strongly suggesting it was basically a 2020 newborn? Also, was it going to launch in 2018 without games? If not, why have we basically not seen those games in 2 years? Design isn't a straight line but they had to have straight up lied in 2018. It seems hard to believe there was even a prototype, an OS, or games back then, let alone them being anywhere as close to the finish line as they claimed. There's no other reasonable explanation. Do you really believe they were at the finish line but basically threw the whole thing out and sunk two more years of funding into it to go back to square one, and risked all this wrath merely to tweak something that was never meant to compete with the Big 3 anyway? It was a bad precedent and I'd say a big reason so many remain so skeptical of them now. Plus if they are to be believed, we are basically now where we were then. So it creates a sense of deja vu and reawakens those doubts. Fool me once and all. Meanwhile it's like those who are giving them the benefit of the doubt now have no recollection of this 2018 deception. Or am I imagining this whole 2018 last-minute launch abort? I mean I believe they've been trying to make an honest company out of themselves lately by actually buckling down. They've been showing some things since, but I can see how people might think they might resort to "old" (2018) habits if the going gets too tough for them.

So if the OS has been done for a while... I wonder what that P#152 means in the corner of that D-Cave video shot on Feb 29? Back on Jan 31 there was that Atari VCS Dashboard Test No. 30 video and it had a #30 in the corner. So if that's a dashboard test number... it went up by 122 in 29 days or about 4.2 per day. Calculating back at that rate it would've been #0 on Jan 24. OK sure that might be sloppy math but... is that a dashboard test number still or not? Is it "done" if there have been 122 different versions to test in the last month? Edit: well on the upside if there have been 122 versions in the last month, I guess they actually must be busy at something.

Bit of a party trick. I have really bad eyesight without my glasses so I'm used to reading blurry words without much effort.

Hey I love a good Internet sleuthing gotcha as much as the next guy, and I hate to be a downer but.... there's clearly an Atari logo that comes up at 0:36 and disappears. The "#30" doesn't come up until 10 seconds later. That first logo is probably your missing BIOS logo and the black screen that follows is probably the bootloader interrupting it. Also the "no network connection" thing showed a WiFi symbol but they clearly plugged in an Ethernet connector. Maybe it was doing all its Internet through the wire and whatever triggers the notice was broken and only looking for WiFi? Or maybe it took a while to connect? Like I said I don't want to be a downer but there comes a point where you gotta believe faking it is more work than it actually doing it. Occam's Razor... it's just a bunch of boxes launching browser bookmarks right? Does Antstream run in a browser too? I always believed they'd eventually muddle their way to something. Monkeys and typewriters and all. With luck in another 8 months or so maybe they'll have something they can put into production! Oh, second edit to add: I just rewatched and that popup on the right of Netflix says "Restore pages? Chrome didn't shut down correctly" so you don't have to guess what browser. Apparently it's Chrome.

Them: "Hi, welcome to the Atari Hotel." Me: "Hi, I have a reservation." Them: "Oh, I see your room isn't quite ready yet. Please have a seat in the lounge." [Later...] Me: "Is my room ready yet?" Them: "Oh, it was ready, but we took the opportunity to make it even better. It's exciting! Check back soon!" [Later...] Me: "Any news on my room yet?" Them: "No news is good news!"

No doubt another deliberate typo to remind their team there's still work to do.

Well, it is a French word. This one took me by surprise. I know it probably shouldn't have. I know they're lawsuit happy but it feels like a new low for them in my eyes. You're selling shares of your lawsuits now? Even if your business model is based on lawsuits as revenue (bad enough) this act is basically selling part of your (slimey) golden goose for some quick cash. Were the lawsuits they had not moving fast enough to finance Fred's million euro compensation this year?

I dunno. We all agree that the single board PC is not a revolutionary thing. They've got some other company to make a board. They've got the timelapse on Medium of the thing being assembled. We're all having great fun over their incompetence but I gotta believe that unless they run out of steam they'll eventually get somewhere. Once you've got that far, installing Windows or Ubuntu or whatever on the hardware doesn't seem a big deal assuming it functions. So either that timelapse was of nonfunctional hardware or they've managed to find a competent outsourcer to reinvent the single board PC by now. The UI on the other hand... plenty to still mock there... (I guess that's why it's called a mockup..) How rushed do you have to be to use Google images and not spellcheck? So I'd say the UI is some sort of interactive mockup made in Unity over the weekend. They're zipping around boxes but it doesn't launch anything. It looks like something a kid in a video game design program would get as an assignment in their Unity course. Whether it's running in Windows or Linux really doesn't make much of a difference at this point. If it runs one stock operating system it'll run another. So I'm willing to believe they've got hardware now. So half way there! Only two and half more years to go...

Ladies and Gentleman... thanks to an amazingly talented friend of mine that shares my sense of humor, I give you an ATARI AGE EXCLUSIVE!!! Here's a sneak peek of the revolutionary new VCS (2600) game, Asteroid... asteroid.bin

It's not a mistake. Some retooling was required to get the games going on the platform, but they've managed to squeeze the game play into one asteroid. And likewise one Yar.

Saw this on Twitter too and had to pop in to talk about it... Gaems is a carrying case for consoles that has a monitor inside the top cover, turning your console into a "sort of portable" like old school "portable" computers from the 80s before laptops. I note the Atari logo and VCS logo are stickers added to the case not part of it. Not a big deal either way but just mentioning to preempt anyone jumping to the conclusion that this is a collab of some sort. The Gaems cases are agnostic... you can put a PS4 or an Xbox One or whatever in them. They have Velcro straps to hold the console in place. Of course this back on shot invites all sorts of "what's in the box?!" memes. Edit to add: do you think this is trolling people asking "where are the games?" "Oh! We thought you were asking 'where are the Gaems?' My bad!"

Can I just say that Atari's Twitter is tedious as hell? "What's your favorite Atari memory?" "What's your favorite Atari game?" "Retweet if you're a retrogamer" "What was the first Atari game you played?" "We all have a beloved Atari memory. What's yours?" "Retweet if you're a retrogamer" (yes, twice) Hey, Atari...

Well to be fair it IS kind of the objectively-consistent flipside of this argument...

I would just like to point out that you can't spell Tallarico without "taco". Or "Tommy Tallarico" without "Amico" for that matter. Coincidence? ...or perks of being the CEO? In fact, FYI, Tommy Tallarico is an anagram of Totally Mr. Amico. So I think that settles it.

Ahem. This thread is reserved for unrequited nostalgia, deep disappointment, and tacos. Since you seem to have actual progress toward releasing this game, I assume you are posting it here because it ships with hot sauce.

What's like YouTube but offers the reviewee a delete button?

Credit where credit is due, that was a hit for The Supremes first in the 60s. Kim Wilde's version is a decades-later tribute. Just a more successful decades-later tribute than the VCS.

You say that now, but as with all collectibles, give it time. In a few decades people will be paying a premium for fresh air. Speaking of air... I was just thinking... in an alternate reality do you think the VCS is shipping with SwordQuest AirWorld as an exclusive pack-in?

I mean this in all sincerity, with no sarcasm or snark: people often make the mistake of thinking critics are united and of one mind. We're all individuals with our individual concerns and objections. What one perceives as "moving the goal posts" by critics is often just one set of critics with one set of objections dying down, and another becoming louder. Individually, no one's criticism changed. No goal posts are moved. There are just a bunch of different people with different goal posts. Personally my criticism has always been that Atari is showing great incompetence at this and the product sounds underwhelming even if/when they eventually get it done. I expect they will get it done but it will be half-assed because it seems like it's stretched them to the limit just to get this far. And yeah maybe I couldn't do better if I did it myself but I'm competent enough to know I shouldn't claim otherwise... and I definitely wouldn't have take people's money up front on promises I wouldn't be qualified to keep at the time I made them. But I do believe they're trying. I personally think it's been more a "fake it 'til you make it" scenario than a deliberate grift. But if everyone who put money on this is happy in the end then from your perspective, sure, mission accomplished. From my perspective they'll still appear to have been incompetent. Both can be true at the same time.

I can't see any realistic scenario where it goes into the public domain. Assets never die. They just change hands. Atari was dead as dead can be back in the 90s until Hasbro bought it off some holding company for pittance. If someone started a crowdfunding campaign to raise funds to buy Atari and give it to the community, it would fail, because the more interest there was in the crowdfunding campaign, the more it would boost Atari's value. You'd be chasing your own tail. Who could buy Atari and turn it into a big thing? Not AtGames. They milk the IP they touch, not nurture it. Honestly, the best idea I've heard came from my teenage kid: that Louis Vuitton or someone like it should buy it and just turn it into a clothing brand and then they'd just dump the software into public domain (since they don't care about the software) as part of a viral marketing strategy.

I don't know why I hold out hope you're not just amusing yourself by trolling this thread, but it's hard to see it otherwise with this kind of slippery reply. This is not a hard concept to follow. You asked why this "special treatment" for Atari. The answer is because their situation is unique: first, in that they alone took the money in advance as @MrBeefy said, so people (particularly those who put the money in) are obviously more anxious to see that faith validated. It's not at your discretion to dismiss something that obviously is a blatant difference. (If you're going to troll, at least try to be a bit more clever in deflecting the point. That last reply above was on the intellectual level of "I know you are, but what am I?") Second, it's never been necessary to beg Microsoft and Sony for tangible demos. They do it voluntarily, publicly, and well in advance of the product launch. Have you never seen an E3 ever? Please don't tell me you need the difference between the Microsoft's, Sony's, and Atari's E3 presences explained to you. So, apples and oranges, really. Atari sucks at this. Plain and simple. If Microsoft or Sony failed at the PR so spectacularly, they'd probably be taken to task, too. They certainly have been mocked for less egregious missteps. Even if you're not trolling, you're no better than anyone else in this thread when it comes to speculation. You're just tending to the most optimistic explanation in absence of information. I mean I could speculate that there is no AtariOS (e.g. Wyatt was just talking about plans or a work in progress, not something he'd actually finished), no games, no Store, and they haven't even figured out how to make Atari Vault work on the thing... if there is even a thing that runs software yet. It's no less defendable a position than any other speculation here. Before a launch, the core issue at hand is not what they have or haven't done, but their track record of credibility. It's par for the course for crowdsourced efforts to build credibility and excitement as a way of making the thing "go viral". You want those who didn't get in on the Founder package jealous of those that did, rather than thanking their lucky stars that they didn't pay a cent for the entertainment of watching what could easily be a dumpster Fyre (as @Zor rightly alluded to). That's not how you build a brand. Atari is failing at this. Here's a little experiment for you: tune in tomorrow to see the Amico response. They're either going to reveal a lot on Dec 3 as they promised, or they're going to fail to live up to their promises, and they'll be taken to task for it too. Let's watch and see how that plays out. (I'm not Amico's audience BTW, not interested in getting the thing, but even I can see they at least have some expertise on board that Atari does not when it comes to this.) BTW, to your credit, you're doing one hell of a job in helping some posters here realize their hope of seeing 1000 pages before end of year. So... on their behalf, thanks for that?

Hands up everyone who thinks this is still a relevant and current assessment of the design.