godslabrat

If I were gonna list Paprium, I'd add Sydney Hunter on there too.

It's worth noting that as of now, Polymega has been yanking our collective chain longer than Atari SA did with the VCS.

The password is 1... 2... 3... 4... *gulp* 5.

I'll admit, you may have a point on the Coleco Chameleon. It did set the precedent. But I don't see that as a bad thing. We know the pattern and these faux-retro clowns don't deviate from it. The chameleon begat the AtariBox, and the Polymega, and the Amico. That's not even counting Raspberry Pi remixes like the Retro engine sigma. We observed that the VCS followed the pattern the Chamelon set. That hardly puts the VCS in a favorable light.

If you hang out in an Atari forum, popular opinions probably aren't your thing anyway.

I think we can safely conclude Wal-Mart has not done that. If they had, they would have ordered a sufficient quantity that the 10,000 made for the IndieGoGo backers would not have been the struggle that it clearly was.

Yep. I remember very common computer advice in the floppy era was "Don't forget, 'Formatted' and 'Preformatted' mean the same thing!"

To be fair, I worked at Circuit City for several years. I also would get a sinking feeling when certain products would show up, knowing they were just a horrible mismatch of what they did vs. what they cost. As for the stinkers that just sat on shelves, I always had to wonder what idiot in corporate approved it, and what terrible "market research" had sold them on the idea. There was a certain price point where people stopped using critical thinking and would often take a risk on any piece of garbage that looked "fun", but that price was considerably less than $300. Honestly, you'd start to hit resistance once you got past $99.99. As has been said so many ways, if someone walks into Wal-Mart with $300 in their pocket and sees the Atari VCS, there's no comparison they could make that favors the VCS. In the odd event that someone gets duped into thinking it's a fully usable computer out of the box, or a video game system on par with an Xbox, you can be sure they would discover their mistake within an hour of opening the thing up. Not a small point to make: Wal-Mart has a very generous return policy, and people returning items there because of buyer's remorse is almost proverbial. But to take this out of speculation and back to reality, there are about 3,500 Wal Mart supercenters in the US. Let's put aside the idea of each one selling a pallet of Atari VCS units. If each store were to get six of them, Atari would need to produce another 21,000 units, plus enough to handle warranty issues and replacements, of which they've already had their share. So, a very conservative number would be them having to produce at least 25,000 more units. And this is the same company that nearly choked the fish trying to fill less than 10,000 IGG orders. Where would Atari get the money to make nearly 30,000 units? Would Wal-Mart actually have confidence in them to deliver on time? Would Wal-Mart have any faith in Atari to buy back any unsold stock? I'm going to make the suggestion that stocking the VCS at retail would put nearly ALL the risk on Wal-Mart, for honestly very little reward. They've been working with Atari SA on this for about three years now, and have not made any move to help Atari get the VCS into stores or help fund production. I'd conclude they have their reasoning.

The Wii-U was incredibly frustrating for me, as a fan of Nintendo in general and of the system specifically. On paper, there was no reason it shouldn't have been able to compete with the 360 and PS3. It had comparable tech, plus Nintendo's exclusives. The problem was, Nintendo kept trying to focus on the stuff that no one cared about (the tablet being first on the list) at the expense of stuff that could have been bigger had they put some muscle into it (social media, streaming, TVii). The tablet wasn't even a completely terrible idea, but the fact that it became the hill Nintendo had to die on just sunk the works. If they could have made a tablet-free version that could sell for $220, comparisions between it and the other two systems would have been much more even. It was also a time when being able to play Blu-Ray (or at least DVD) was still really relevant, so not having that as an option was, again, a problem Nintendo gave themselves. The legacy of the Wii-U is that, if you like the original Wii, it's the best system to play those games. But it could have been so much more.

I'm needing a little more here. The VCS is (hypothetically) $300 and shares a name with a well-loved predecessor, and you can move a pallet of them. The Wii-U was (in reality) $300 and shared a name with a well-loved predecessor, and gathered dust. Let's not forget that the Wii-U offered games relevant to the current generation... so much so that when they were re-released on the Switch, they sold like crazy.

I'm totally on board with that. In my life outside AA, I make a point out of trying to spotlight geek communities and making them stronger. I've grown very distressed by what's happened to retrogaming, and I put part of the blame on profiteering with no committment to quality. But that's another conversation. That's a great question. Because of the thread topic, I'll limit my ideas to what Atari themselves could do: 1) Create an HDMI replacement for the 2600. I know that conventional wisdom says this wouldn't sell, but Hyperkin has one. And, to be honest, if your main marketing angle is "We made the 2600 once", then you need to own that and put some money into it. 2) Create an actual vintage development community, including tutorials, tools, and possibly even the ability to make your own carts. Now, I realize that last one might not be cost-effective, but the first few most certainly are. You might actually get some sellable games out of the deal, at a much lower cost than outsourcing to known companies. 3) Embrace other platforms and offer your vintage and slightly-less-vintage games as a service that includes online chat, communities, and competition. This is probably my favorite option, as it's the one most agreeable with modern gaming and moden audiences.

Let me answer your second question first: I do not believe that efforts such as this, which are blatant get-in-and-get-out cash grabs, are healthy for the hobby. It presents retrogaming consumers as easy marks, and sets a precedent that we'll buy any piece of garbage box that has a familiar logo on it. I beleive the hobby is healthier when it's expected that new products be of higher quality. The Atari VCS is an insult to the consumer precisely because it treats us this way-- expecting us to buy anything because it has a familiar logo. Beyond that, the company itself showed a massive lack of concern (and occasionally, outright disdain) for its customers. Showing up at a convention with a demo unit, but not being able to even talk about the "target market", much less answer basic questions about the hardware functionality, sends the message that you don't care about what you're selling, or the people that buy it. Taking pre-order money before engineering the shell (requiring a full redesign afterward) is such a high degree of incompetence that no one should feel right trusting the company with thier money. This doesn't even address the speculation that Atari never intended to fulfull the orders themselves, they just wanted to be bought out and unload the project onto someone else. For the moment, I'm just sticking with the screwups that have been documented beyond the point of disagreement. I can't get into their head as to WHY they did it, but the answer that consistently makes sense to me is (as I said above) they wanted a flashy project to boost their stock value and attract a buyout. Personally, I'm very impressed by the success of the Flashbacks, and think that the VCS is an incredible wasted opportunity on a technical level. Had Atari actually wanted to build a viable platform (as opposed to just throwing something together and running) they could have and should have started with the Flashback concept and built it up from there. The very first detail we ever heard about the Ataribox was that it "was not a Flashback", and I contend that was the first among many, many errors they made. Again, that's an error made with the assumption that Atari actually intended to build a viable platform. Since I do not beleive they did, I do not think that's an error in their view-- only mine. If I had faith in Atari's motivation to build the VCS into something, I could agree with you. Yes, indeed, I would love updated versions of all their games-- but it's not the first time Atari has played with that idea and dropped it almost immediately.

The bar was set way too low at only half a million for pre-orders. With such a small amount of money for such an big project, there just wasn't a good outcome waiting.

These are valid questions and I will dispense with the snark. I'm focusing on the VCS because it intersects with an interest I actually do have-- retro video games. There are equally stupid products I never acknowledge because they never even tangently touched a topic I cared about. Truck Nuts come to mind. Do I want it to fail? Yes. Absolutely. The reason why is not out of any need for vindication (I'm not expecting any trophy to show up) but because I find the business model to be insulting to the consumer, and not healthy for the hobby as a whole. If the VCS fails, it will be a sign that this model should not be repeated in the future, and that will hopefully beget future projects that are better for the hobby. I have no need to tell you that your purchase of the VCS was "wrong", as most of the people on this forum I've spoken to seem to have bought it as a combination of a lark and an expression of brand loyalty. I see nothing particularly shameful about either one (I have a closet full of Star Trek uniforms. It's not my place to be judgy on taste). What I do feel the need to do is call out people giving out bad advice on buying one (there's no reason to get one beyond the aforementioned lark/loyalty). Saying it's a fun toy is one thing, saying it's a reasonable alternative to a PS5 or Roku is another. This is also why I do not take seriously any discussion if the "next wave" of the device. It is what it is. I realize I might get carried away with the hyperbole. I should work on that. However, I do not feel that Atari has taken me seriously as a customer, so I refuse to take the end result of their efforts seriously in return.

I just have so much love to give.

Yes, I said they struggled. PCs are in a decline, and have been for 10-15 years now. This is well-known. Wal-Mart stocks the few units they have in low-traffic areas, taking up very little floor space, and they don't bring in large quantities at a time. These are all signs of a product that isn't moving in high volume... which, given the known decline of PCs, is perfectly understandable. I then point out that, despite this, a $300 Wal-Mart PC would offer a better value for a homeschool parent than a ChesnaisTrunk, and that would be apparent to anyone doing the shopping. Thus, it is very easy to speculate on the possibility of seeing Atari's potato at retail. This is, of course, ignoring the completely separate question of if Atari would ever be in a position to actually produce enough units to supply even a full Wal-Mart region, much less the entire chain.

At no point in the post you screencapped did I state that no one bought $300 Windows computers from Walmart.

So you posted a giant argument, replying to me, about something someone else said?

I literally did not say that.

So, to recap: Your contention is that a parent buying a homeschool PC would consider "Google docs on Atari" or "Wipe and install Linux" as meaningful alternatives to buying a Windows PC for the same amount of money, and just opening the box and plugging it in? Am I understanding you correctly?

You can't run Windows on a VCS without buying AT LEAST an external drive and a Windows license. Most sources I've seen say you really should boost the memory if you plan to do this. And then yes, a keyboard and mouse. Sorry, I thought you knew that.

What word processor and spreadsheet does AtariOS include?

Exactly. And the AtariCube doesn't. Not without adding a bunch of add-ons.

What parent is going to get their kid a "school" computer that doesn't run a mainstream operating system out of the box?

The key answer, then, is "no". Wal-Mart has struggles selling $300 computers that actually do something useful out of the box. There's no way the Fuji sphere is competitive as a PC or as a Game Console in the world of big-Box retail.