New Atari Console that Ataribox?

[Agillig]

 

Ok, for the record - I'm not bashing this guy.  He says he supports a low cost entry to indie game development.  That's fine.  I respect that.   Thing is, the X-Box One has an obscene amount of indie games.  They seem to have their own division devoted to working with indie developers, and they give indie stuff a fair amount of time at E3 every year.  Soooo...if people want indie games, why not just get an X-Box One?  You can get one cheaper than an Atari VCS, which isn't available now (and who knows when it will be), has plenty of Atari and other retro games, has a very well done eco-system (in my opinion anyway), and is far more suitable to modern gaming and streaming than the Atari VCS.  Sooooo...what's the draw?

 

There's also the issue that as of today, we don't know of ANY company making games, indie or otherwise, for the AtariVCS.  Yes, you can run PC and Steam games through Windows, but that kinda defeats the purpose of the system.   The Ouya failed, in my opinion, for the same reason the Coleco Chameleon would have failed if it wasn't a scam - people aren't going to pay a premium price to play indie games.  No developer is going to make games exclusively for the Atari VCS when they could just release it to Steam, and sell it to VCS owners that way.  What would be the point in making it exclusive with such a limited base?

 

So, what are VCS owners left with?  A box that can play Retroarch in a round about way? Most of the people with the know how and desire to do so have already done so with their SNES/PSX/Genesis plug and play systems, and it didn't cost 300 bucks.  Again, not trying to crap on this guy, I'm just trying to understand the thought process.

 

  

[cybercylon]

1 hour ago, godslabrat said:

AtGames is fine for what it is... I'm glad it's there.  Hyperkin is as scuzzy as mike Kennedy and only moderately more competent than Freddie Cheznits.  I try to avoid them but I'm not seeing an alternative to getting a Retron 77 at some point.  
 

Retro-Bit seems like the clear winner by default.  They aren't great, but they would probably piss on me if I was on fire.

Retro bit has done a better job with their recent controllers, so I will give them some credit for making an effort.

[digdugnate]

51 minutes ago, Agillig said:

 

Ok, for the record - I'm not bashing this guy.  He says he supports a low cost entry to indie game development.  That's fine.  I respect that.   Thing is, the X-Box One has an obscene amount of indie games.  They seem to have their own division devoted to working with indie developers, and they give indie stuff a fair amount of time at E3 every year.  Soooo...if people want indie games, why not just get an X-Box One?  You can get one cheaper than an Atari VCS, which isn't available now (and who knows when it will be), has plenty of Atari and other retro games, has a very well done eco-system (in my opinion anyway), and is far more suitable to modern gaming and streaming than the Atari VCS.  Sooooo...what's the draw?

 

There's also the issue that as of today, we don't know of ANY company making games, indie or otherwise, for the AtariVCS.  Yes, you can run PC and Steam games through Windows, but that kinda defeats the purpose of the system.   The Ouya failed, in my opinion, for the same reason the Coleco Chameleon would have failed if it wasn't a scam - people aren't going to pay a premium price to play indie games.  No developer is going to make games exclusively for the Atari VCS when they could just release it to Steam, and sell it to VCS owners that way.  What would be the point in making it exclusive with such a limited base?

 

So, what are VCS owners left with?  A box that can play Retroarch in a round about way? Most of the people with the know how and desire to do so have already done so with their SNES/PSX/Genesis plug and play systems, and it didn't cost 300 bucks.  Again, not trying to crap on this guy, I'm just trying to understand the thought process.

 

  

Its a shame- i love a good Trailer Park Boys reference. 

[Lodmot]

2 hours ago, Agillig said:

There's also the issue that as of today, we don't know of ANY company making games, indie or otherwise, for the AtariVCS.

Lul, i was probably the last standalone person that actually wanted to, until Atari burnt me too. o u o

[Agillig]

32 minutes ago, Lodmot said:

Lul, i was probably the last standalone person that actually wanted to, until Atari burnt me too. o u o

That's what we call a blessing in disguise. 

 

Out of curiosity, what kind of work have you done in the past?

Edited January 11, 2020 by Agillig

[OCAT]

^ What about Gamester81, he and his associates were working on a game called "Tiny Knight" for the Coleco Chameleon, they could port it to the VCS

[Flojomojo]

9 minutes ago, OCAT said:

^ What about Gamester81, he and his associates were working on a game called "Tiny Knight" for the Coleco Chameleon, they could port it to the VCS

It's on Steam. It could run on VCS if someone really wanted to buy it from a tiny fly by night digital store instead of Steam. 
https://store.steampowered.com/app/445210/Tiny_Knight/

[godslabrat]

47 minutes ago, OCAT said:

^ What about Gamester81, he and his associates were working on a game called "Tiny Knight" for the Coleco Chameleon, they could port it to the VCS

Gamester81 couldn't endorse the Ataribox because Freddie doesn't pay his shills, thus not meeting GS81's sole criteria.

[+frankodragon]

[TankedThomas]

8 hours ago, Lodmot said:

It could be a hard drive, don't know. If the Atari VCS is basically just like any other x86/64-based PC, it is probably able to boot up via USB device. 

Doubtful. It's not all that simple to run Windows 10 from an external drive. It can be done, but I doubt these goons would figure it out. Plus it should have an internal SSD, so an external drive shouldn't be required. 

7 hours ago, PlaysWithWolves said:

 

It's a very long cable; probably for the controller. It moves in both videos and more so in the Fortnite one.  The boot-up video has it plugged into the back side, for some reason.  The Fortnite video seems to be plugged into the front USB.  I don't think we've ever seen either controller work wirelessly; ostensibly to keep the battery from running down.

 

If you see something I don't, that's cool.  But I think it's just a red herring.

Look in the mirror at the beginning of the first video - they appear to be holding the controller with no wires attached, and it seems like they turned the machine on with the controller.

 

Maybe once they launched Fortnite, they plugged it into USB, or were just using the mouse and keyboard we see. Which is a great selling point for a console - optional features are fine, but requiring a mouse and keyboard in the living room has never proven popular. 

[Agillig]

52 minutes ago, frankodragon said:

Eh....does it play "all the Atari games already"?  For a lot of games like E.T., Pac Man, or Star Wars, he's probably going to need an emulator.  Surprised Werner didn't set him straight on this one, but I guess it's not good to fact check when it goes against the agenda.

[+Spriggy]

On 1/7/2020 at 10:52 PM, OCAT said:

Yea, it is not like we have never seen that clear case pic before, nice way to try to dazzle people with BS

 

 

Just saying .......................... Again.

 

 

On 1/8/2020 at 1:42 AM, tschak909 said:

It's clear they have a board. Anyone can get a board spun, (The fact that the RetroVGS/Chameleon people didn't is a testament to their utter incompetence).

What's NOT being made clear is that there is NO SOFTWARE.

 

I don't mean, "no games"

 

I literally mean, NO SOFTWARE. No OS, no GAMES. No development SDK, nothing.

 

 

Wrong!  Windows 10 has "Solitaire" pre-installed.  ?

 

On 1/8/2020 at 11:21 AM, Flojomojo said:

They could call it...

Chuck E Chesnais?

or maybe 

Five Nights at Freddy's?

 

 

 

 

On 1/9/2020 at 12:46 PM, toiletunes said:

 

 

 

On 1/10/2020 at 12:48 PM, CPUWIZ said:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And look who's back from hiatus, after the poor bloke started to lose faith with Ataco..... and in fine form as usual thank you!  It's like he's had a fresh install and starting all over again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[roots.genoa]

4 hours ago, Flojomojo said:

It's on Steam. It could run on VCS if someone really wanted to buy it from a tiny fly by night digital store instead of Steam. 
https://store.steampowered.com/app/445210/Tiny_Knight/

No, it's not the same game:

 

Which reminds me we haven't got any news on that one for a long time... I applaud CollectorVision for the Phoenix but they really should finish old stuff (Justice Beaver for instance) before announcing new games.

[PlaysWithWolves]

CES is over.  Wasn't there supposed to be bomb-diggety news? Does anyone else get the sense that this was a very low-energy week for Atari? 

 

On 1/8/2020 at 8:19 AM, PlaysWithWolves said:

Plenty of taco-flavored popcorn yet to be eaten

 

.

 

On 1/8/2020 at 8:19 AM, PlaysWithWolves said:

I fully expect to be disappointed. 

 

 

[PlaysWithWolves]

??? 

From the Random Pic thread:

 

7 hours ago, 0078265317 said:

 

[Mikebloke]

18 hours ago, Zor said:

You would find something else, another cable you can't perfectly see. Also that is a ridiculous expectation, no company would do that.

There's plenty to mock, they came up with a barebone PC with an Atari OS that seemingly is yet unfinished. That is enough to poke fun at. No need to imagine absurd conspiracy

I think someone else has already quoted the major videos atari has produced that were faked, wrong or whatever since you posted this. Also, we wouldn't expect Sony to show their hardware when they started comparing PS5 capabilities with the PS4, because there was genuine belief what was being shown was real. Now atari has been caught multiple times in lies, we would expect a step by step proof to say for sure what we'd be getting was what was intended. 

 

It's been a very long time now since a video was produced by atari that wasn't shakey cam, with words like "OK" "go" "yo" signifying start or end of a video. I produced better videos at school for drama lessons back before you had computers to edit it. None of it looks professional. You can be in a hotel room and get decent video with background noise added into the editing. Could have been a great chance to get their "guests" to do reaction videos - the lack of which must be really telling at this point that maybe.. Maybe nobody went into to atari hotel room, maybe nobody was invited, or maybe nobody took the invite... 

15 hours ago, Lodmot said:

 

If it sounds like I'm supporting the VCS suddenly-- I assure you, I'm not. I'm being very much realistic here and pointing out all the possibilities. Sure, you could be right that it's fake, and I could be wrong. But until it's finally proven either way, we can all make up theories that either explain and validate the footage as being real OR being fake.

I think a lot of us would actually seriously consider the ataribox, we just need something of it to go right. Price point and capability is probably the biggest issue for me right now, secondary is a lack of exclusive games / shop, there is literally nothing I can't get on anything else. 

 

A low level pc connected to my pc might be a great way of me going through my steam library of all the indie games I've picked up through the years, but I'm still going to have to install and see if it loads or not... 

[Lodmot]

8 hours ago, Agillig said:

That's what we call a blessing in disguise. 

 

Out of curiosity, what kind of work have you done in the past?

I've been doing a lot of solo projects mainly, and I've been making games in Game Maker since I was like 11. I also programmed about a dozen or so Atari 2600 games in Visual batariBasic (one of which was for AVGN). I also made an Ouya game called Game Catcher, and my most recent one was Ballzerk for Android/iOS. Lol.

 

I was really interested in doing a more ambitious open-world 2D platformer with native 4K graphics, exclusively for the VCS. That's why I was saying before-- this whole situation is kinda saddening/frusterating for me, and its also why ive been particularly vocal about the VCS over the past 2 years or so. I really wanted to do something FOR it, but Atari didnt care obviously. I had an artist lined up and everything. XD

Edited January 11, 2020 by Lodmot

[OCAT]

In the PC article, he never actually said he played any games on it.

"Fortunately, Atari was eager to demo another important feature of the VCS: PC Sandbox Mode. Since the Atari VCS is basically just an AMD Ryzen-based PC, it can be treated as such, and that includes ignoring the Linux partition of the system and installing Windows 10 instead. Microsoft's operating system runs just fine on the Atari VCS, which opens up the console for modest PC gaming, including both Fortnite and Borderlands 3. It isn't exactly a Threadripper-toting beast of a gaming PC, but for $250 to $390, you aren't going to get that kind of performance in a PC."

The problem here, is that the prices he stated does not include a Win10 license. Add another $120. Do not forget you need external storage if you want to play PC games, they tend to be quite large and would fill up that piddling 32GB quite fast.

So now after all that fuss to get the VCS board crammed into that slim shell, you have external pieces and wires all over the desk, nice. If they wanted to make a clean presentation they should have used a wireless keyboard and mouse.
Mike Kennedy was also touting "oh we got a case that means we are %90 done!"

The retro Atari case was the selling point to most who bought into this, or parhaps they wanted to be different, hey look at me! I'm a rebel and I am flipping off the big 3! Well you are different now, still waiting patiently to be wallet stripped by Atari, most other consoles release the system on time so that they can.. make money, not E-BEG for it for FREE!

(Allegedly)

[Tickled_Pink]

4 hours ago, OCAT said:

In the PC article, he never actually said he played any games on it.

"Fortunately, Atari was eager to demo another important feature of the VCS: PC Sandbox Mode. Since the Atari VCS is basically just an AMD Ryzen-based PC, it can be treated as such, and that includes ignoring the Linux partition of the system and installing Windows 10 instead. Microsoft's operating system runs just fine on the Atari VCS, which opens up the console for modest PC gaming, including both Fortnite and Borderlands 3. It isn't exactly a Threadripper-toting beast of a gaming PC, but for $250 to $390, you aren't going to get that kind of performance in a PC."

The problem here, is that the prices he stated does not include a Win10 license. Add another $120. Do not forget you need external storage if you want to play PC games, they tend to be quite large and would fill up that piddling 32GB quite fast.

So now after all that fuss to get the VCS board crammed into that slim shell, you have external pieces and wires all over the desk, nice. If they wanted to make a clean presentation they should have used a wireless keyboard and mouse.
Mike Kennedy was also touting "oh we got a case that means we are %90 done!"

The retro Atari case was the selling point to most who bought into this, or parhaps they wanted to be different, hey look at me! I'm a rebel and I am flipping off the big 3! Well you are different now, still waiting patiently to be wallet stripped by Atari, most other consoles release the system on time so that they can.. make money, not E-BEG for it for FREE!

(Allegedly)

TBH, after actually coming across one of these individuals recently, there seems to be much more to it than just the fancy box. The reasons behind people backing it include, in no particular order:

1. The Atari brand. These are less cynical people than we are who have a rose tinted view of the BRAND.

2. The case.

3. Lack of technical knowledge about computers in general which led to them thinking of 2, 4 or both.

4. Atari failing to point out clearly that the machine would be limited primarily to Fortnite and Indie games. It's clear that some people think it's going to run GTA5 at 4K.

[Paul Slocum]

5 hours ago, OCAT said:

In the PC article, he never actually said he played any games on it.

Also, where are the other articles?  By the end of E3 there were a ton of articles, but this time only ONE article after a week of having a private showroom at CES!?  Maybe more articles are coming, but based on E3, we already would have seen most of them.  I couldn't even find a single social media post from anyone showing the AtariVCS floor models on that were supposed to be on the CES floor.

Edited January 11, 2020 by Paul Slocum

[Flojomojo]

@Paul Slocum that's because their attendance at e3 (who went? we don't know) wasn't for the mass audience, it was to tell the Atari SA board of directors and maybe their stockholders that they were there. It's just checking a box. It's not a meaningful milestone on the road to bomb-diggety limited edition Asteroid play. 

[leech]

On 1/10/2020 at 9:29 AM, CPUWIZ said:

 

I am almost done with Half Life for the 7800, taking pre-orders shortly.

As long as it has 3 Pokey's onboard, I'm in!

[TankedThomas]

6 hours ago, OCAT said:

In the PC article, he never actually said he played any games on it.

"Fortunately, Atari was eager to demo another important feature of the VCS: PC Sandbox Mode. Since the Atari VCS is basically just an AMD Ryzen-based PC, it can be treated as such, and that includes ignoring the Linux partition of the system and installing Windows 10 instead. Microsoft's operating system runs just fine on the Atari VCS, which opens up the console for modest PC gaming, including both Fortnite and Borderlands 3. It isn't exactly a Threadripper-toting beast of a gaming PC, but for $250 to $390, you aren't going to get that kind of performance in a PC."

The problem here, is that the prices he stated does not include a Win10 license. Add another $120. Do not forget you need external storage if you want to play PC games, they tend to be quite large and would fill up that piddling 32GB quite fast.

So now after all that fuss to get the VCS board crammed into that slim shell, you have external pieces and wires all over the desk, nice. If they wanted to make a clean presentation they should have used a wireless keyboard and mouse.
Mike Kennedy was also touting "oh we got a case that means we are %90 done!"

The retro Atari case was the selling point to most who bought into this, or parhaps they wanted to be different, hey look at me! I'm a rebel and I am flipping off the big 3! Well you are different now, still waiting patiently to be wallet stripped by Atari, most other consoles release the system on time so that they can.. make money, not E-BEG for it for FREE!

(Allegedly)

It's worth adding that Atari said (or at least implied) that you NEED an SSD to install other operating systems. I'm sure there's a way to use the NAND, whether intentional or not, but it's not even enough space to install Windows 10. 

 

Even if you get a cheap Windows 10 key (despite what people say, you can get a legit key for about $20 - the dodgy ones are usually about half that and below, and chances are you have access to an old machine that you can take a Windows 7 or 8 key from to get Win10 free), that's still an expense. NVMe storage often costs more than a regular 2.5" SSD. Even if you pay only $100 extra in total, that's still a lot of extra money. 

 

Plus the SSD sits on the top of the board, which means you're going to have to disassemble the whole machine just to add one. 

 

And after all of that, you'll be lucky to run even Fortnite at 1080p 60fps. I haven't looked at the Fortnite gameplay video on a big screen yet but to me, it looked simultaneously smooth and choppy. Hard to really tell what the frame rate is doing. The textures looked to be very blobby and undetailed too, but that could just be the fact that it's Fortnite. 

 

Plus I would assume that, if it's not a fake demo, that VCS ALSO has the extra RAM that the clear model has. Which means better specs than the final product. So it'll run games better. But you'll have to pay extra to upgrade it manually. Which is ultimately misleading. 

 

Best case scenario, they have a turd on their hands (or stinky cheese, perhaps?); worst case scenario, they have a plastic shell and some (probably working but probably not great quality) controllers. 

[Paul Slocum]

14 minutes ago, TankedThomas said:

And after all of that, you'll be lucky to run even Fortnite at 1080p 60fps.

I'm pretty certain that's not remotely possible.  From the tests on similar Ryzen boards, at best it's 720p@60fps and 1080p@30fps, and nothing playable at 4k.  The video they posted was shot at 25fps, and in that video the game was running without skipping frames, which ultimately doesn't mean much since you can't tell the resolution or graphics settings.

[TheVgaTv]

29 minutes ago, Paul Slocum said:

I'm pretty certain that's not remotely possible.  From the tests on similar Ryzen boards, at best it's 720p@60fps and 1080p@30fps, and nothing playable at 4k.  The video they posted was shot at 25fps, and in that video the game was running without skipping frames, which ultimately doesn't mean much since you can't tell the resolution or graphics settings.

 

The video from last year where they showed Borderlands 2 running was so bad that it looked like it was running at about 12 frames a second.  And that's from a then 7 year old game....