New Atari Console that Ataribox?

[PlaysWithWolves]

Three  levels of DIY tacos:

 

 

[+frankodragon]

3 hours ago, Flojomojo said:

But who destroys the Gond?

[pacman000]

7 hours ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

"We're excited to inform you that in an effort to better connect with our fans, that ATARI is back! What this means will come to light over the next several months, but we can only fulfill everything that our fans and partners want with a new crowdfunding campaign. Never having used crowdfunding before, we're excited to start this new chapter in company history. By contributing to this new IndieGoGo campaign, you'll receive a thank you letter from Atari (expected delivery date: Dec: 2025) and the knowledge that you contributed to gaming history! Higher end backers will receive a letter that uses an 8-bit font instead of Comic Sans. All letters will come with an authentic Atari "Fuji" logo, the most iconic brand logo ever created!"

 

Please note that for any inquiries about a game device called the Atari VCS that you refer to the Wikipedia page about the Atari 2600. We know of no other device to have purported to go by this name, but our lawyers are getting to the bottom of this as we speak!"

I think the RCA, Polaroid, & MGM, logos are probably more iconic. And more likely to be on a new, good product.

[JBerel]

 

[Flojomojo]

There's so much derp to unpack from everything written by "Atari_VCS_Official" and the latest specimen is a doozy. As usual, I've screencapped it because it is unlikely to stick around after they fire this numpty and claim they never said it. 

 

 

Do we need to spell out how it's so ridiculous? No, but let's do it anyway, because it's fun. The question was, "Is this actually a game console?" A yes or no question, answerable by a Magic-8-Ball. So how do they answer it? In the most roundabout way imaginable, from the Michael Arzt school of not saying anything with a sprinkle of the Rob Wyatt community college of distractions. 

 

 

Quote

Hello! Thanks for your question. We do get this a lot, and understandably so. The Atari VCS isn't like anything else out there, nor is it being marketed as such. We've used terms in the past such as "un-console" or "raspberry pi for the living room" but really, the system is a lot more than these terms and using them seems to oversimplify and get folks bent out of shape.

The only reason those words are "in the past" is because you're taking 2 years to bring an off-the-shelf PC to market. Oh, it leads to oversimplification of your oh-so-complex product? Then maybe you suck at communication. Who's "bent out of shape," exactly?

Quote

In short, the Atari VCS is gaming and video computer system aimed at transforming the TV experience you know and love into something even better.

Better how? By overpaying for Roku functions that have been available since 2008? And hiding behind laughable technical and legal claptrap?

Quote

The Atari VCS controllers are optional, as you can use any Bluetooth-enabled peripherals, even keyboard and mouse, but the classic joystick, for example, makes things simple, fun, and nostalgic for those who are excited about that aspect.

That aspect of what? Holding a controller that suggests a design that was obsolete 40 years ago? Their lack of specifics is enough to get someone bent out of shape! And what about mom, how will she ever get on Netflix with that controller?

Quote

Users will begin their Atari VCS experience by entering into an ever-expanding Atari playground, filled with all-new games, plus access classic and remastered favorites, streaming multimedia, and personal apps; or easily make your own.

Yet with the exception of Atari Vault (most recently on sale for four dollars from Steam) no games have ever been named, not even the "remastered favorites." These chodes can't even get their PR straight. How dare they suggest the pigeons can "easily" make their own games?

Quote

The powerful AMD Ryzen processor can handle it all, including 4K HDR streaming.

Just add content. Not included: a reason to do it here. By the way, it's not a particularly powerful processor. 

Quote

Switch to the unique Atari Sandbox Mode and unlock an open and expandable PC for freedom and versatility you can’t get with any other TV game system. Boot into your desired OS and be free — you actually never have to go back to the Arari Wold if you don't want to! The Sandbox Mode opens up the full PC architecture of the Atari VCS so you can install a secondary OS to use apps like Steam (etc.) to play AAA games, retro emulators and essentially have a full PC to do anything you want. The Atari VCS blends the best of consoles and PCs. Additionally, the Atari team will be providing a free and open Atari VCS SDK to all that want to create their own Atari VCS games.

Calling this "unique" is completely ridiculous. They just described every PC on the planet. Who here believes the "Atari VCS SDK" is going to be anything beyond a web link to Unity? The last time we heard from Rob Wyatt, this thing could barely boot, and it's never been shown working in the cute 1977-inspired case. 

This part is important, let's see it again.

Quote

you actually never have to go back to the Arari Wold if you don't want to!

Damn straight I actually never have to go back to the Arari Wold <sic> because I never bought a ticket to that hellscape in the first place. 

Quote

Really, it's neither a PC or console! But also both!

Way to answer the question, Poindexter. 

Quote

We genuinely are not trying to compete with the "Big Three" in the traditional sense at all - we've created something completely new and we understand it won't be everyone's cup of tea, and that's okay!

Of course it's okay, because no one will be buying it, and "Atari" doesn't care because they're using other people's money. 

Quote

If you've made it this far, I hope I was able to answer a few questions or clear something up for you. Anything else, just ask!

Oh yes, it's perfectly clear how much of a loser scam this project has been. Chameleon 1.01. Anything else? I don't dare ask about games. 

 

 

[JaqenHghar]

On 8/28/2019 at 9:59 AM, Flojomojo said:

I'm licking my chops over how "Atari" is going to announce further delays, or Yar forbid, cancellation of the product. Will they ...

A. Delay the launch to make it EVEN BETTER!

2. Blame it on something vague, like "we didn't like our old partner"

III. Try to change every posting with a timeline, pretending it was always coming out in Spring 20Never

d. Put it on the haters for ruining everything with their misinformation. 

"With each delay, we've been making the VCS even better. After several iterations, we've learned now exactly what we need to do to deliver you a first class product... we have to delay the VCS forever.  With an infinite delay, we'll be able to make the VCS infinitely better, and our customers deserve the best!  Stay tuned for more announcements..."

[JBerel]

Just for fun, and for the benefit of our audiences in the AtariVCS Supporters group and Atari's marketing people, who all will deny reading this forum, but we know they can't stay away..... 

I bring you legitimate learning classes.......

 

Lesson 1

Dr. Bongo's Easy Peezy Remedial Marketing Program

 

If you can't describe in concrete terms what makes your product special, it's likely that you simply don't have a special product. If you don't know how to describe it, how the heck will anyone else?

 

Ask yourself these questions:

• What drove you to create it in the first place? What unfulfilled need did you see? This shouldn't be a difficult question to answer directly and without fluff.
   
• Who is this product for? Note: Anyone who will give us money for it, is not a winning answer.
   
• What are the product’s basic details? This includes attributes such as dimensions, materials, what it will do, features and functions.
   
• Why is this product useful or better than its competitors? This can be anything from quality to value to features that set it apart from other available products. Specifics help.
   
• How does the product work? If you are selling anything with moving parts or electronics, a working demonstration model is a must-have.

 

Or alternatively......

 

Lesson 2

Brother Xavier's Primer on How to Start a Cult in 5 Simple Steps.

1. Create a unique selling point

First, decide who your target market is so you can tailor your message to them. Identify people who are disaffected with mainstream society — the marginalized, the friendless, the religious fanatics — and determine what you can offer them, and how best to get them to fund your plans. (Pro tip: retro gaming and sci-fi conventions tend to be popular genres.) Orgies can also be a draw card but if this is unsuccessful, try celibacy for everyone except yourself. One or the other usually works.

2. Build a visual brand

When it comes to cult success, appearances are far more important than a coherent belief system or facts. You want your cult to be instantly recognizable to the ignorant bystander — so think carefully about the best visual representation of your brand. This could be anything from red jumpsuits to matching blonde bob haircuts. Iconography, logos, drawings and demonstrations for the purpose of illustration is also an excellent way to attract a flock like moths to a flame. 

3. Get the right team

While you’re busy slaving over your social media manifesto and delivering interminable speeches over the speakers as your minions (ahem, followers) are engaged in physical labor promoting your cult, you’ll need a sidekick or System Architect if you will, who can actually put in the hard hours of running a cult. You may be surprised at the high level of tedious admin involved, from HR and recruitment through to surveillance and punishment.

4. Stand out from the competition

The surefire way to make a splash in an overcrowded marketplace is to physically move your cult to somewhere that is less crowded. A quick Google search will uncover numerous crowd funding avenues that are perfect spots for getting your cult up and running. If that doesn’t garner instant attention, have a go at stockpiling arms and getting into spats with the locals — your face will be splashed across the media faster than you can say “Jonestown.”

5. Define what success looks like

So you have a handful of dedicated followers — congratulations! But before you descend from your UFO or relocate to a South American jungle, you need to figure out what your end goal is. This could be anything from staging a spectacular showdown with the FBI to releasing a product that can be used to herald the coming of the end. Once you have an objective in mind, it’s easier to break it down into smaller manageable steps.

Finally, remember that every cult leader started right where you are now… so don’t give up! Good luck!

 

[+frankodragon]

Atari:  "Basically we haven't had the balls to build any prototype yet as we're still counting our money down by the docks of the Seine River.  We hired a goon named Lefty to help us stash the cash until the heat is off from the saps who crowdfunded our little scheme."

 

[Inky]

[Flojomojo]

Well done with the marketing advice, @JBerel. We really shouldn't need to point this out to them, but golly it feels good. We should get paid for all the money we would have saved them! I solemnly swear that if they admit they suck, cancel this project, and refund all the pigeon money they took, I will retire from whatever it is we're doing here. 

 

A few more, with inspiration from here. 

 

Have an up-to-date positioning document and buyer persona for your product. How often do you start developing product or marketing materials without fully knowing who the target buyers are and what their pains are? It happens more than it should when we are going too fast, but without this fundamental understanding you run the risk of losing control of your message. Never forget: YOU own the message.

 

"Atari" says: We do get this a lot, and understandably so. The Atari VCS isn't like anything else out there, nor is it being marketed as such. We've used terms in the past such as "un-console" or "raspberry pi for the living room" but really, the system is a lot more than these terms and using them seems to oversimplify and get folks bent out of shape.

 

Know how customers are using your product. Observing customers in their native habitats need not be intimidating. Ask for a ride-along with a sales rep, or talk to an established customer willing to give you honest feedback. (Customer reference program members are an ideal source for this.) Use these conversations to determine if how you’re positioning your product is real or just hype. Be prepared for an opinion different from what you were expecting and take it in context with other conversations. Just because you have one conversation with one customer who says something completely divergent from what your buyer personas say doesn’t mean you have to shift how you market your product. Keep it real by speaking to a real customer at least once per month. This is also a non-threatening way to gather win/loss data.

 

"Atari" says: In short, the Atari VCS is gaming and video computer system aimed at transforming the TV experience you know and love into something even better. The Atari VCS controllers are optional, as you can use any Bluetooth-enabled peripherals, even keyboard and mouse, but the classic joystick, for example, makes things simple, fun, and nostalgic for those who are excited about that aspect. Users will begin their Atari VCS experience by entering into an ever-expanding Atari playground, filled with all-new games, plus access classic and remastered favorites, streaming multimedia, and personal apps; or easily make your own. The powerful AMD Ryzen processor can handle it all, including 4K HDR streaming.

 

Know your product’s top three competitors and be able to explain how your product is different. I bet this is the No. 1 request you get from sales. But if you’re like many companies, analyzing competitors is a tricky undertaking. It’s frowned upon to download a competitor’s product under false pretenses or break the law in any way, so you rely on publicly available materials that are either authored by the competitor or from an expensive third-party source. My advice is to stay above it and simply provide strengths and advantages of your products.

 

"Atari" says: We genuinely are not trying to compete with the "Big Three" in the traditional sense at all - we've created something completely new and we understand it won't be everyone's cup of tea, and that's okay!

[RainbowCemetery]

Quote

or easily make your own.

seems like a bit of a self own to say it's easy for some end user scrub to make their own games to play. what's that say about this crate having nothing even confirmed in development after 2 years

[JBerel]

It's really a self own to say, "If you don't like it, you never have to use the Atari World part of it. If you bring your own storage and operating system, you can use it just like any other PC!"

 

That would be because there's nothing special or different about it. It's a low end PC without storage, keyboard, mouse, monitor or operating system. But wait, you can lay a keyboard and mouse in your lap and use it in your living room, just like all the hundred other "living room PCs" and "Media Centers" they discontinued last decade because nobody wants that. Awesome!

[+frankodragon]

Pretty much it's been like a pigeon going around in circles like a broken record.

 

 

[racerx]

11 minutes ago, JBerel said:

It's really a self own to say, "If you don't like it, you never have to use the Atari World part of it..."

*Arari Wold

[Flojomojo]

I see now that the purple Comic Sans font I chose for the "Atari" quotes don't look as nice on mobile. Sorry for that. Rest assured that everything that was said by "Atari" was not very well thought out and defies common sense. 

 

Here's some irrational tribal thinking. 

 

 

[+frankodragon]

Talk about bomb-diggity 

 

[CPUWIZ]

12 minutes ago, Flojomojo said:

I see now that the purple Comic Sans font I chose for the "Atari" quotes don't look as nice on mobile. Sorry for that. Rest assured that everything that was said by "Atari" was not very well thought out and defies common sense. 

 

Here's some irrational tribal thinking. 

 

 

 

LOL, they don't need to be supported, they are financing this on their own. ?

[JBerel]

It's funny, back in the 80's the Mt. Fuji logo looked iconic like the Golden Arches. Now it just looks like the emoji for somebody taking it in the ass. They've really depreciated that brand from where I'm sitting, which is a good distance from that thing, but where I can keep an eye on it.

[MrBeefy]

19 minutes ago, Flojomojo said:

I see now that the purple Comic Sans font I chose for the "Atari" quotes don't look as nice on mobile. Sorry for that. Rest assured that everything that was said by "Atari" was not very well thought out and defies common sense. 

 

Here's some irrational tribal thinking. 

 

 

I like how he says one of OUR competitors. Poor John is in deep. If they go belly up someone will need to do a wellness check on him.

[TACODON]

They should just turn the company over to John. At least someone with passion would be running the place.

[+frankodragon]

5 hours ago, MrBeefy said:

I like how he says one of OUR competitors. Poor John is in deep. If they go belly up someone will need to do a wellness check on him.

He's going to be visiting a pub trying to relinquish those bad memories.

[roots.genoa]

Atari Wold. A whole new wold of forems.

[Flojomojo]

6 hours ago, roots.genoa said:

Atari Wold. A whole new wold of forems.

A dweam within a dweam. 

 

Hey, here's another good one from the sad sack signing in as "Atari_VCS_Official." This was posted a month ago. 

 

Question: Its almost halfway through summer and we are 6 months from launch. where are the games?

 

Answer:

Quote

Hey there! As I've mentioned before, we will have more game announcements later this summer. Summer Just started! Totally understand the frustration, but know that your patience is greatly appreciated.

We are working with developers and there is a TON of work going on behind the scenes to be able to get you guys the best system we can. We are buried in work with how overwhelmingly positive the response from developers has been!

We love you guys - the community - and know that we wouldn't still be thriving as a company and a brand without you. We've been very upfront in saying that we have more announcements coming soon. I think a lot of frustration stems from the fact that the announcements have been rolling out in waves, but I get it! On the other hand, how much fun would it be if everything got announced at once?

To provide some clarity on gaming on the system in general - understand that the VCS isn't meant to be "just another console" or likewise, where exclusives are the only thing that sells the system - we are going for the opposite of that. Sure, that's there, but it isn't the main focus. We want the VCS to be viewed as a powerful mini-PC for the living room, capable of gaming, streaming, creating, and so much more! You can customize the system to your heart's desire, while still having the ability to come back to the Atari World and play in a playground that we've designed. Your possibilities are -endless- in Sandbox Mode; there are no restrictions on your gaming! For that reason - we aren't leaning heavily on the exclusives - yet - because we want to showcase the other features of the system that set it apart.

Consoles are not one size fits all, and the Atari VCS aims to bridge that gaps and provide the freedom where consoles cut players off.

That said, we will have more announcements soon. Game-related and otherwise! I know you all are sick of hearing that from me, but that's what I have for you for now. As soon as I get the green light to reveal more or start hyping you guys up, you best believe I jump on here first to give you the scoop!

Yeah, it's the same thread where they publicly promise to get back to a would-be developer, then fail to follow through, because email is sooooo hard. 

 

[digdugnate]

from Atari VCS' latest post on the Facebook:

 

 

whaat? happy dreams, broken promises, and fairy dust isn't working for Nutari?  Say it ain't so!

[Flojomojo]

@digdugnate Probably good that you screen capped that while was up, because they're likely to delete all that stuff to "protect the brand," because they're feckless baboons. 

 

Thanks to self-proclaimed "benevolent dictator" @The Historian, the Reddit group has more integrity. You could even say the community is managed. I think I found the crux of the issue thanks to this back and forth between Nate and "Atari_VCS_Official" from a while ago. Screenshot under the spoiler tag. 

 

Spoiler

 

Quote

Reddit operates a little differently than other social platforms, and I'm sure you know. A little more personal, if you will. However, on the other social platforms, users will troll simply to troll. Repeat offenders are blocked if they are contributing nothing but toxicity. We still have to look out for our brand - all brands do this. It's nothing new.

Misconceptions about Reddit aside, this says it all. Our brand is what they care about, because that's really all they have. The "un-console" is nothing without the brand, and they know it. If they're making plans for a game store, they aren't talking about it, because they know it will be small potatoes -- anything exclusive will be unknown, and anything big will be available elsewhere. "We are doing our own thing. " Maybe they realize they're not fooling the average customer, but maybe just maybe they're convincing some low-information stockholders (also available in Sweden now!) that they're up to something good. 

 

The brand is for selling t-shirts and licensed retro games. It's been like this since 1984, when Warner sold off the consumer electronics division to the Tramiels, and it got worse and worse over the years. But even in those times, the brand was kept afloat by putting it on technology designed elsewhere. The brand is what Fred Chesnais talks about the most. It really puts Mike Arzt into a tough spot because he has to do the dance of pretending that the brand has anything to do with his little hardware project. 

 

The brand has benefitted from low-level lies and confusion, like the people who think that post-1984 arcade games from Atari Games like Marble Madness and Paperboy are affiliated with Atari SA. The brand has been perfectly content to imply that fun, simple gameplay like Pong and Asteroids is somehow "in its DNA" when all they've done is purchased some intellectual property rights -- the actual creators are long gone from the company, and have been for decades. The brand is invoked in the low-effort, low-information Facebook posts about the glory days of the company from when they made games, that happy and profitable period from 1977 to 1984. 

 

If their product were anything worth a damn, it could stand on its own, without hiding behind good feeling about the brand. They wouldn't have to silence people who ask in good faith about the games they want to play. A healthy company would deliver a winning product and the brand would be an afterthought, one of the last things. Instead, we have an outside-in process, just like the Coleco (brand) Chameleon, designed around an old enclosure as if surface appearances were more important than content. 

 

Question: why don't they use Jaguar, Lynx, or the computers to augment their posture with the brand? Is it because despite their fans, they were niche things, that have become obsolete and irrelevant to the modern market? If they were to take stock of their situation, maybe they'd wake up to the fact that without anything of substance behind it, the brand doesn't deserve this kind of treatment. Even Feargal, the shameless grifter, knew to talk about content once in a while in addition to pushing the brand.