godslabrat

January 5

8 minutes ago, Atarick said:

There is a ton to unpack across these extensive comments, but I'll simply say this. Given your tone and expectations, it sounds like there was never anything Atari could have done in the modern era, under Chesnais or another person, to earn your business. The people who bought and or like the VCS are a minority on this forum, that's obvious. But let's stop giving the Switch a pass or calling it some great product. I find the Switch to be overpriced junk. Comparing the VCS as inferior to the XBox or PS5 or a superior gaming PC, fine. But the Switch? Woof.

Also, how is this less plug and play than a RPi? What are you comparing it to when saying "this isn't the plug and play console you're looking for"? There are now countless videos of people installing updates, a normal expectation for any PC or console, and doing just that.

The problem I have is that in one thread we unanimously concede that Atari is no longer (and probably can never again be) big 3, then in another judge them as if they are. I am not confused about what Atari SA, all 30 of them, are. They are trying to raise brand profile and capital to sell and further diversify their footprint in the cryptocurrency and digital blockchain markets. The VCS tied into that, but whatever. It wasn't shoved down our throats. They had an idea that morphed into a prototype and they limped to deliver it. The people who backed it backed it, and Atari did as many of us expected. I'm genuinely lost half the time on what is actually being argued in this thread.

Just from a classic gaming perspective, the switch has a library that includes NES, SNES, Atari, Capcom, Sega, and a bunch of Arcade.

It's way more of an "Ultimate Retrobox" than the VCS will ever be.

You're also getting not-quite-totally retro titles from the PS2 era, and actual new games as well.

January 4

14 minutes ago, zzip said:

Just my mistake due quick cut and paste work, but every second post talks about how AtariVCS is no different than a Micro-PC, including my own, so I'm not glossing over anything.

You complained about walled gardens, then eliminated the option that was not a walled garden.

I just suspected the two might be connected, that's all.

January 4

35 minutes ago, zzip said:

No- these are closed systems with walled gardens.

Is there a particular reason you snipped out my comment about PCs when you wrote that reply?

January 4

16 minutes ago, zzip said:

So what you are saying is there's no middle ground between $50 flashback device and $4000 PC?

I disagree.

That's not what I've said at all. In fact, I've said the opposite: there is a huge middle ground, and that middle ground is currently occupied by devices made by Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft. In addition, there are a considerable number of PCs at similar price points.

The middle ground is flooded, and the VCS doesn't even have what it takes to be an edge case.

That's been my point since the beginning.

January 4

5 minutes ago, zzip said:

I've never had a PC that doesn't force you to use KB/Mouse at times, even when gaming with a gamepad. Especially if Windows is the OS. Gaming towers are large, noisy with all the fans and put out a lot of heat. The ideal living room gaming PC would be something small and compact with something like SteamOS/big picture mode running at all times. Yes you could get a small itx system and do this, but it costs around the same so it comes down to personal preference.

So, are you telling me that the VCS allows you to use a gamepad to do all the "sandbox mode" stuff, like run emulators, Steam, etc.? Because that runs counter to what I've heard.

January 4

1 minute ago, zzip said:

They don't need to build a new gaming platform since you can run Steam on it and have access to thousands of games.

You don't need a VCS to run Steam. Steam's been around a long time. Nothing new here.

1 minute ago, zzip said:

The flashback consoles are very limited in what they offer. The VCS could play all those games, plus emulate consoles that will never get a Flashback, like Jaguar. It can run comfortably in your living room via joystick/pad controls. It's much cheaper than a $4000 gaming PC.

Either you're not getting my point, or if you are, you're ignoring it. Flashbacks are more limited in what they can do, but they have a considerably lower price to compensate. High-end gaming rigs are far more expensive, but can do more than the VCS can to compensate.

In short, the VCS is way too expensive for what it can't do.

January 4

4 minutes ago, zzip said:

One thing I've observed about human nature is that when a company creates a truly pointless product, it is met with a collective yawn. Not much discussion happens because most people feel it's not worth their time talking about.

The fact that every thread about this thing has generated dozens of posts every day consistently over the past several years, shows it struck a nerve. There's a bunch of people annoyed or even angry that it exists at all, and they spent a lot of energy trying to convince people not to buy it and buy something else instead. This is an interesting phenomenon, and it wouldn't happen if there was truly no interest in such a product.

I think you overestimate how much the activity of this forum reflects the behavior of consumers as a whole. As a whole, the world is indeed meeting the VCS with a collective yawn, as evidenced by the fact that the crowdfunding sold barely over 10,000 units, the units that were sold are readily available still sealed on the secondhand market, and no further runs seem to be planned.

It didn't sell well, the people who actually bought them aren't using them, and there are unlikely to be more. That is not the mark of a product with healthy consumer interest.

7 minutes ago, zzip said:

A typical PC doesn't usually work well in a living room set up. A lot of us are hitting the point in our lives where our eyes aren't as good as they used to be and the tiny screens on iOS/Android devices don't help that. I can't game on those devices. I need a larger screen and real controls, not touch screen controls

You do realize that PCs can have their resolution, font size, and layout altered by the user, right? All with considerably less effort than messing with a VCS. You can add literally any control device you want, from a one-button joystick to a VR handset, and everything in between. What you're doing is arguing in favor of a PC, not against it.

10 minutes ago, zzip said:

Also for many years, the conventional wisdom was that smart phones/tablets killed mobile gaming platforms, and there was no point in creating new mobile consoles. Then Nintendo came along with the Switch and proved that to not be the case. People get bored of old tech and want new things. Christmas/Birthdays happen every year and people get new tech devices they don't necessarily really need but get anyway.

The VCS isn't a new thing. It's a very old thing, in a new case, with all the useful options plucked out and sold as upgrades.

January 4

1 minute ago, jaybird3rd said:

At the very least, they should have started with a clear vision of exactly who this was being made for. If they had set out to target a specific (and sustainable) market segment, it would have helped to bracket everyone's expectations while avoid unfavorable comparisons.

Don't forget, Atari themselves said in the Register article they didn't know who it was being sold to.

January 4

10 minutes ago, jamm said:

I don't know anyone who expects Atari in any current incarnation to compete with the Big 3 or even thinks they should try. If there's any confusion about that it's been due to Atari's own mis/communication.

All the negativity I'm aware of comes down to two simple issues: 1.) Whether there's a place for VCS2020 that makes sense beyond nostalgia given its feature set and price. 2.) How Atari has mismanaged the project on nearly every front.

An Atari Flashback does not compete with the Big 3 in any meaningful sense, but it's very clear to see what it offers, why, and what the value proposition is. Same with the Retron 77. Same with a $20 joystick plug-and-play or a $4000 gaming PC.

It's not that people expect the VCS to jump in and compete with the Big 3. It's that people expect it to do SOMETHING besides extract money from their wallets and take up space on a shelf.

January 4

29 minutes ago, zzip said:

A lot of the negativity towards Atari and the VCS seems to come from the fact that they are no longer one of the Big 3, and people wish that if they are going to do hardware, they would make something that puts them back in competition with the Big 3.

If Atari is going to sell a video game console (which is what they themselves brand it) then it should be compared to the devices made from other video game companies. I don't think it's unreasonable to want a console to be competitive with other consoles. If Atari did not want the comparison made, they shouldn't have announced this project.

29 minutes ago, zzip said:

When you look at the fact that the old Atari demographic is primarily gen-Xers that are now in their peak earning years with disposable income, it makes more sense. What do you get the Gen-X tech-head dad who already has a PC, Switch, PS5, big screen TV, etc? VCS would be great if they were an old Atari fan. A lot of the arguments around here that people buy a Switch OR PC OR VCS OR PS5 are not realistic in the first place. Many households now own multiple devices.

Why does it make more sense? It still comes back to "What can the VCS do that other devices do not?" Chances are, if someone has a major console, they already have a gaming experience superior to what the VCS will allow. And if they have a console and a PC, there's literally nothing the VCS can offer them.

If the people buying the VCS are, as you say "gen-Xers that are now in their peak earning years with disposable income", then what I'm hearing is that it's a great device for people willing to buy a widget that adds no real value to their lives and provides no advantage over competing products. I'm not suggesting such people don't exist (they obviously do) but I don't think they exist in sufficient numbers to build a viable gaming platform.

January 4

6 minutes ago, zzip said:

It's not going to post the kinds of numbers that Switch/PS5/XBox will post. Everybody knows that. It's not in competition with the switch simply because there's nobody out there trying to decide whether to buy a Switch or a VCS. The VCS won't play the Nintendo exclusives, the Switch isn't an open PC type device. They serve different purposes.

The primary purpose of both is to play video games. To say they're not in competition with each other is wishful thinking.

The fact that the competition is one-sided and completely unfair doesn't change that.

January 4

1 hour ago, zzip said:

Of course, it's whatever floats your boat. I find the Pi's to be lacking for this purpose and would prefer to have something PC-based. It has more options and less work. Yes you can build a PC for possibly less, but that also assumes your time isn't worth anything. A lot of people would rather buy complete hardware

Agreed. But for anything resembling a PC, the VCS is *not* complete hardware.

January 4

45 minutes ago, zzip said:

Again, the mistake you consistently make is comparing it to mainstream consoles. It was never in competition with the big three, it was always going to be a niche product. We knew that since the day it was announced! It's not being produced in large quantities. That aids in it's collectiblity.

If it costs as much as the Switch, it's in competition with the Switch.

Not to mention, this is from Atari's website TODAY, not when it was first announced, TODAY:

"Atari® returns to the living room with the Atari VCS™ — a completely modern gaming and video computer system, blending the best of consoles and PCs to delight a whole new generation of gamers and creators."

So how is it not in competition with the Switch, PS, Xbox, etc., if it's not a "complely modern video gaming... system" and "blending the best of consoles and PCs"? What part of this does NOT invite comparisons between the VCS and other relevant gaming devices?

January 3

On 12/26/2020 at 12:31 PM, Agillig said:

Any word on this being sold in brick and mortar stores? I'd love to get one when it comes out, but I don't want to mess with the nightmare that is present day shipping.

Last I heard, you could either order from Polymega themselves, or another online retailer, but no one has committed to stocking it in B&M stores.

Even giving this project an unhealthy dose of optimism, I think you'll see covid shipping issues go away long before Polymega is available at your local McGameShop.

January 3

2 minutes ago, Atarick said:

I agree totally, I also have a theory here. As stated, Atari as constructed has no capacity for large-scale production. None. There are something like 30 employees and limited capital investment. By my rudimentary estimates, they sold ~15,000 VCS consoles/PCs/Hybrids during the IGG campaign. I suspect they may sell, say, another 7-10k in pre-sales, so just under 25,000 units total, as a ceiling. I still think this is a play to drive up the curb appeal of the brand and sell it. This would give Atari momentum, they have done a ton of work on the blockchain side (though admittedly much of that is way over my head), kept their footprint small, and have begun allocating capital for game development/acquisitions (per their investor statement and recent Chesnais interview).

For the brand, which has turned a profit for the first time in, what, 25 years (?), having the ability to say "We generated interest in a new console and had pleasing interest that we feel can be cultivated further with additional resources, potentially forming a competitor to existing systems within the next 5-10 years" is not nothing. But it won't be this crew. It will take deep pockets and savvy with developers and others. But I do think that the VCS is nothing more than staging for a target market they can use as a cudgel when they go to market. "We did this, imagine what YOU, Mr. Investor-Bucks, could do!"

I agree with nearly everything you've said here. I'm skeptical, though, that a company exists that would be fooled by l'Atari's house of cards, yet would have the resources to sink into purchasing it.

Or to put it another way, I'm thinking if someone were going to purchase Chesnais, INC., they would have done so before now.

January 3

All this foolish talk of a shell. It's what's inside that counts.

January 2

1 hour ago, zzip said:

To me this is the main use case for the VCS- the ultimate living room retrobox.

If that's true, and I have no real room to disagree, I'm still not seeing why the VCS is a compelling solution. There already exist devices which can fill that need... for less money and with less user labor.

With "living room retroboxes", you usually come down to people arguing between cheap devices you have to set up yourself (RPi, PC, Etc.) , or expensive ones that are ready out of the box (Polymega). The VCS falls into neither camp, so I'm really not sure who it's cheerleaders are going to be.

January 2

4 minutes ago, TACODON said:

I think this confusion on emulators comes from a comment Atari made that Rob Wyatt was scratch building one for the VCS at some point. I dug around the IGG page and couldn't find that comment but I recall us debating that in the old thread. Maybe someone with better search skills can find that information. The only thing I recall otherwise was that this was to be working with the Atari OS and not something for the vault which I believe led to even more confusion. Though if I had to guess I would imagine that initially Atari had different plans and was going to have the games right in the box and not as a stand alone app.

At the end of the day with so many moving goal posts and changes with personal who knows. The other issue is we know Atari likes to rewrite history so the offending comment may be scrubbed from what ever Medium article or Facebook post that was claimed in.

As a thought experiment, it would be interesting to see if we could pinpoint the exact moment when l'Atari started actually realizing they would need to do the work themselves, and not some hypothetical company that would buy them out.

At what point was the Ataribox no longer Someone Else's Problem?

January 1

15 minutes ago, Agillig said:

Yeah, I didn't think it would ever be released either. I don't think it's anything special, and I can't see it being a commercial success, but most of the new owners seem happy with it. Of course, if I waited so long for something that people said would never come, I would certainly appear happy as well.

Are the backers going through a honeymoon phase that won't last? Considering how little you can actually do with the system, and playing roms of 40 year old games isn't exactly new or exciting, I suspect so. But for now they're happy, so good.

It's not fair for me to try and read the minds of people who backed this and received one. If they're happy, they're happy.

That said, it's an extremely small number of people that won't be getting any bigger. If running Linux and old roms is a big deal, then the VCS won't be a game changer regardless.

January 1

1 hour ago, Bill Loguidice said:

That was kind of my point. Certain proponents are picking and choosing the comments from a select few that it would never even be released and apply it to the entirety of the "not 100% supportive" crowd, including those of us who thought it would be released but didn't have a good "why?" for the whole project. My assumption is that that same broad and inaccurate stroke will be applied to the "not 100% supportive" crowd as THE reason for the platform's inevitable failure to catch on.

Which is nonsense. If a platform doesn't get supported, it's because it didn't offer anything the public wanted to support. Consumers don't "owe" a company support, and they aren't "hating" if support isn't offered.

January 1

23 minutes ago, Bill Loguidice said:

Ultimately, just like the proponents are gloating that the console achieved the major milestone of actually being released and "what do the haters have to say now?," they'll similarly blame all the skeptics for the platform's inevitable failure. That's just the way these things go.

I'm just curious how we arrived at the point where merely being sent from a factory to the public was a mark of success. It wasn't for the Jaguar. Or the 3do. Or the CDi. Somehow a console merely existing means it's awesome?

Should this be dubbed "The Kennedy Effect?"

January 1

Remember when this was the most absurd project around?

good times, man. Good times.

January 1

2 hours ago, racerx said:

I just love that we're now apparently using the Jaguar as a benchmark of success. 😂

At least the Atari of its day didn't consider merely RELEASING the console to be a victory.

December 31, 2020

13 minutes ago, Chopsus said:

I have the impression they only made enough for IGG Backers ... not even preorders

it will not surprise me if they come up short on the IGG orders either

That's why I'm looking for numbers, because I agree... the chances of IGG backers getting shafted are pretty high, and it would be typical l'Atari to publicly screw someone after giving themselves a big back-patting session.

December 31, 2020

Yeah, that's what I'd heard. Just wondering if you take the total amount made, subtract the Indiegogo fulfillments... whatever is left is available to sell via Walmart and GameStop. Then these things are gone. And is l'Atari going to make more? They're blowing smoke about announcing games, but what good are future titles if only the same 11,000 people can play them?

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