Tavi

If I may, while I have no insight into conversations between yourself and Tommy; I would like to take a poke at #4. From his posts and interviews given on the Amico console, Tommy had mentioned that all games will be rated 'E' or E10+', so in that regard parental controls is not needed as you do not have to worry about a little one accidentally starting up say your 'AO'-rated 'Murder Death Gore 2000: Special Edition; now with 158% more Ultraviolence!' and traumatizing themselves with it. But limiting game time is also form of parental control; and it is also one that some parents will use (I know a few family members who use time limiting with their kids) so it is a good option to add to the system being advertised as a family-friendly console. So it may come across as being contradictory when you combine the two, but I do believe he was discussing two separate features which it then makes a lot more sense when you look at each component separately.

They are two very different threads are they not? But then Tommy pops in here pretty much daily; if not a few times a day. He answers many questions and often drops hints and tidbits on what is new and being worked on with the console and games. It is easy to stay on track with constant information coming in. Then there is Atari and their Bizarro World logic, where they less they tell you the more you are supposed to appreciate it as 'no news is good news'. So in absence of any real news or information, the topic often turns to random discussions and of course tacos (which are very good, in their defense!). AINO is quite catchy, and also quite fitting!

That is hilarious! It is also a little disturbing a satire magazine article has just asked better questions of Atari then we have had from any other article or interview to date. What did Atari spend the 3M+ indiegogo funding on? Is the Atari Box going to actually make their March deadline? (Spoiler; no, no they are not). Is Atari desperate for cash? Are they going to use that 600K to get the Atari Box into production and over the finish line? Perhaps this Louis Prada should give the next interview with Atari. It would be nice to have someone asking the questions we all want to know rather then lobbing softballs and coming off sounding like an infomercial for the Atari Box.

Video Games Live was actually my introduction to the Amico. I have been to your show both times you played in my area, the first time I bought the DVD (There was just the one available at the time as I recall, it was quite a few years ago!) and the last concert I scored myself a sweet Video Games Live LED shirt. I owned the 2600; it was my cousin that had an Intellivision. Which was a blast to play when visiting, but not the console I grew up on. It was at the last concert I attended that I first heard of the Amico, and it sounded interesting enough I looked it up online later that night and joined the mailing list. Which I am glad I did as it got me in on the Founders Edition and the more I see and hear about it, the more excited I am getting that this is the console I have been waiting decades for. Classic games updated and re-imagined, yet staying true to their original gameplay. It is going to be a long wait for October, but a completely worthwhile one I think.

I am betting Walmart was going to give them a bit of shelf space, as retro is still in demand right now. At least my Local ones always seem to have Flashbacks, My Arcade's and those 'classic edition' retro consoles on display. I could see them having one on the shelf (or in the gaming cabinet) just to advertise they do carry it. Still, it seems something of a moot point as it seems a certainty that the Atari Box is not going to be in stores by March 31st.

I am not terribly familiar with Roblox either (Minecraft seems to be the game of choice with my younger nieces and nephews); but I have heard that the 'oof' sound is the iconic trademark of the game. Also a popular enough sound for them to be marketing real world 'oof'-branded merchandise (shirts and the like). So I am thinking this is not exactly a penny ante case; but more like if it was discovered The Simpsons never actually owned the rights to use Homer's 'D'oh!' sound.

This 'third times the charm' missed deadline is going to be the one that really hurts them. They already have the backers money, so they can ignore them and string them along as long as they like without any real consequence. It is missing the Walmart and Gamestop March 31st delivery date that is going to do some serious damage to their reputation and sales. I doubt either company is going to take well to having their delivery deadlines missed after already advertising them to their customers and taking pre-orders; and also less likely to be forgiving and give Atari another shot at their sizable markets. Atari has got themselves into one impressively sized hole, and I cannot how they are going to get themselves out. Snark and silence is not going to cut it for much longer either it seems. Eventually they are going to have to start answering questions about where their product actually is.

That is my thought on the 'oof' as well. Roblox negotiating to continue using it, or even changing it is not the main issue of discussion between the two parties. How much Tommy is owed by a company that has made billions in no small part from an iconic sound they did not actually have the rights to use is going to be the biggest issue. I am not a lawyer, but I am pretty sure Roblox does not have much of a defence. 'We thought it was public domain' is not going to get them much slack in court for breaking copyright law and profiting extremely well from it in the process. I suppose the sticking point is going to be if Roblox willingly comes to an agreement over it; or decides to be stubborn and fights it out in court. As for the Amico controllers, if it is a standard USB port you would think you should be able to charge them from anything equipped with a USB plug or a USB wall adapter. I once charged my cellphone for a week off the USB plug on the back of a smart TV when I was on vacation and forgot my wall plug!

Perhaps I am showing my age a bit here, but I do remember when Halo came out. It was insanely popular, and everyone wanted to play it. Microsoft certainly did not say 'Oh, you are feeling excluded Playstation owners. Don't worry, we will port it over for you'. They sat on it as a console exclusive for a decade plus. If you wanted to play it, you had to buy their console for it. Same as Sonic and Mario; absolutely exclusive to their respective companies. If you wanted to play a Mario game, you better have some Nintendo hardware. Ditto for Sonic and Sega. Granted recently the big boys have been dabbling in cross platform games; but when you have a multi-billion dollar a year empire and a large and dedicated consumer base backing your products you can then afford to experiment a bit. That some people are angrly demanding Amico exclusives be ported to their preferred systems shows that there is interest in these games, and it would be foolish to toss that interest away in immediately porting them to multiple other systems. Like you had said, it might increase software sales but the hardware is now going to take a hit. Indeed I was just recently having a conversation on console exclusives with someone. I had mentioned 'The Box' and that with a 390$ price tag, it was bringing nothing unique or exclusive with it. Which makes me wonder how well it would do in the retail market when most people already own equipment that can easily replicate anything shown so far by this system (basically a decent laptop and internet). Nostalgia and name brand recognition might bring some people in the door, but you will still need to offer something to keep them interested and using the system if you want to establish yourself in the market. It will be interesting to see what happens and I am expecting many people are going to be surprised by the success of the Amico come October.

Has he specified what this 'prohibitive artificial paywall' the Amico supposedly has is? Because I am stumped and he keeps bringing it up. I doubt it is the cost of the games themselves, as a 10$ high end cost is hardly considered prohibitive, when considering Switch and XBox games cost around 50-60$ per game. The paywall part has me puzzled as well. Tommy has mentioned multiple times that when you buy an Amico game; you get 100% of the game. No DLCs, loot boxes or micro-transactions will be allowed. Many mobile games will indeed give you their game for 'free', but after you play it a bit you start hitting micro-transaction paywalls. That is just the reality of it, you always pay one way or another. None of these mobile companies are making games just to bring joy to the world. It is a bit amusing that when you get right to the heart it; he seems indignant that the console will cost money, and that games will also cost money. The gall of Intellivision, actually charging for their products!

I just got my confirmation e-mail for the FE console! Hopefully everyone else should be getting theirs soon as well then.

Yes, it is not looking good. We have a few reported cases here in multiple cities in Canada as well. It seems going on the honour system for people travelling here from China reporting if they are sick or might have been exposed worked about as well as you would expect it to. I am hoping it will be like Ebola; with one big outbreak and once governments and WHO start to take it seriously, it quickly gets contained. I had no idea China was that bad already, then news is not really covering it here other then reporting on the few cases here.

I am sure Atari would love to have an excuse other then 'Sorry, we are still not even close to being ready' to give backers for the next delay. But the timing is wrong. In 3 days every factory in China is going to be shut down for a month or more for their biggest holiday. This is a well known and yearly event, and should have been taken into account in manufacturing well before now. So, the shutdown was going to occur either way. Now, if the outbreak is still going after a month (that is a horrid thought) then that might be a legitimate cause of unexpected manufacturing delays.

I am looking forward to enjoying some serious bragging rights in forum! Congratulations on having a very successful and popular Founders Edition; there certainly seems to be quite a demand already for the Amico. 2600 units spoken for in just a few hours is impressive!

You know, I was actually thinking while I was waiting for the Founder Edition to open that Tommy should reserve #2600 and 'gift' it to Michael Arzt as a consolation prize? That way Atari will at least have one functional console by October?

I imagine it was quickly renamed after someone realized the acronym SNAFU is not really perhaps something you want labeled on your product?

I really liked this demo! It introduced that there are a few different weapons to be had for the players, and that there is a variety in meteors, and how they react. Some explode in one shot, some seem to require multiple hits, and it looks like you can even push them around and change their trajectories a bit (I saw at one point in the demo a player knocked a meteor into a UFO; destroying the UFO!). Seeing this is according to Tommy an unfinished demo with more tweaks and content to be added yet, I think I am going to really enjoy playing this on the Amico in October.

That is odd? I am quite certain there is only one mailing list, so if you recieved their previous e-mails you should have got the FE link as well.

This is why I picked 5 hours, 40 minutes on the Amico 'How quick will the FE sell out?'. An initial rush from AA members and the Youtubers interested in the console making sure we all nab one (or a few!), and once the Youtubers start blasting out 'FE is now open! Only 2600 available!' I imagine it will start snowballing from there. Limited quantities and some nice perks will drive interest. Plus as Tommy has said many times it is 100% refundable, so even the fence-sitters might reserve a FE just to keep their hand in the game if they like what the see between now and October.

I went straight for the credit card option. Still waiting on a confirmation, but the link said it processes successfully so I am not terribly worried. Honestly I was half expecting a PayPal to choke on this many transactions all trying to go through at once; so I thought I would use the CC option and bypass the rush!

Well, I imagine there are a lot of people all trying to connect to Intellivisions PayPal at this very moment; I imagine a bit of a bottleneck is to be expected in the initial rush? It still sucks, but I hope it pushes through soon for you guys!

Boom~ And one is reserved! Now for the really hard part, waiting until October.

Aww.... You know you missed an opportunity there, you could have done the demo 'Lego Batman' movie style and just done your own sound effects to what was happening on screen. Pew.. pew... pew... Seriously though, the music was pretty awesome, and the game play spectacular! This is one of the games I am very much looking forward to playing!

A second can be a very long time in the electronic world sometimes. I am reminded way, way..... waaaayyy back to when Pentium CPU just came out and they required coolers. There was a DIY'er who had a video I watched on them. Part of it was a demo for the people who wanted to fire up the system quick without a cooler to see if it would boot; before finishing assembling the PC. He flipped the power switch, the monitor flashed, and he said '... and now you go buy a new CPU because that there just cooked it'. In that instance one second was much too long.

I do seem to recall in one of his recent interviews when he was talking about the FE that the mailing list was tens of thousands? Which I think it is safe to say not every one of them are going to want to get in on the FE; but I also expect he would not release 2600 FE consoles if he did not think there was enough demand for them. As an aside I did have a question about the Amico, or more specifically the controllers. I was wondering if (hopefully) many, many years down the road the batteries in the controllers start getting weak and need replacing; how difficult will they be to swap out? I am curious if they are an Apple level of miserable to get at and replace; or Samsung 5-minutes-and-done easy, or something in between? Hopefully this would not be a problem for quite some time, but I was curious!