New Atari Console that Ataribox?

[PlaysWithWolves]

I believe they just brought this into the open because The Register interview raised many doubts about Atari's ability to pull this off. They're likely subcontracted anyway and this is just damage control.

 

Granted, I'm a soulless cynic, so there ya go.

[ColecoJoe]

I believe they just brought this into the open because The Register interview raised many doubts about Atari's ability to pull this off. They're likely subcontracted anyway and this is just damage control.

 

Granted, I'm a soulless cynic, so there ya go.

 

The funny and sad part of this is as soon as I read that press release the first thing I thought about was, hmmm I wonder what this guy is guilty of in his past to be stupid enough to join Atari

 

But I guess there comes a certain point in life when a paycheck is a paycheck.

[Flojomojo]

Looks like Tin Giant has also done work in games development and porting/localization:

 

http://www.siliconera.com/2018/03/20/tin-giant-helping-nis-america-ys-viii-lacrimosa-dana/

 

https://www.giantbomb.com/tin-giant/3010-8865/

 

I expect a lot of name dropping from "Atari" over this, which reminds me of old Atari making much noise out of a former Sega AM2 team member who was tapped to work on "Fight for Life."

[ColecoJoe]

Looks like Tin Giant has also done work in games development and porting/localization:

 

http://www.siliconera.com/2018/03/20/tin-giant-helping-nis-america-ys-viii-lacrimosa-dana/

 

https://www.giantbomb.com/tin-giant/3010-8865/

 

I expect a lot of name dropping from "Atari" over this, which reminds me of old Atari making much noise out of a former Sega AM2 team member who was tapped to work on "Fight for Life."

 

So what if Rob Wyatt decides that the design is all wrong and changes it. I wonder if the backers would mind?

[Lodmot]

 

So what if Rob Wyatt decides that the design is all wrong and changes it. I wonder if the backers would mind?

 

I probably wouldn't mind, no. Though I really do like the way it looks now. According to Curt there's nothing they can really do with the current case design.

This is my opinion, but I'm not entirely sure I agree with that. If they scale up the size of the console by a tad, put ventilation in the ridges, then put more ventilation in the rear panel and have a blower-style cooling system, I don't see why that wouldn't possibly work. o 3 o

That's how my Sega console is set up and that's also how my Lenovo Ideapad gaming laptop is constructed.

[ColecoJoe]

 

I probably wouldn't mind, no. Though I really do like the way it looks now. According to Curt there's nothing they can really do with the current case design.

This is my opinion, but I'm not entirely sure I agree with that. If they scale up the size of the console by a tad, put ventilation in the ridges, then put more ventilation in the rear panel and have a blower-style cooling system, I don't see why that wouldn't possibly work. o 3 o

That's how my Sega console is set up and that's also how my Lenovo Ideapad gaming laptop is constructed.

 

Does this announcement make you feel like they had nothing that's why they needed an architect and if so, don't you feel a little worried about backing it?

[carlsson]

It strikes me that if they produce full size Atari 2600 shells, there will be plenty of room for both hardware and cooling, plus that any surplus could be sold as replacement shells to existing owners. Simply they could do what Commodore USA never quite did with the C64x, a modern system built inside an old form factor. Perhaps even Atari somewhere has access to old molds and tooling, to save more money?

[Lodmot]

 

Does this announcement make you feel like they had nothing that's why they needed an architect and if so, don't you feel a little worried about backing it?

 

Absolutely. Though I figured I could at least give them the benefit of the doubt and keep my original pledge until Friday.

I'm doing my best to be positive about it. xD

[PlaysWithWolves]

Bleeding Cool: The Atari VCS vs The Register

 

That's actually a very good run-down of the whole situation from the beginning-to-present; even bringing up the Coleco Chameleon and dedicating a full paragraph to AtariAge.

 

Also, Lodmot I see you've been busy there too!

[Lodmot]

Bleeding Cool: The Atari VCS vs The Register

 

That's actually a very good run-down of the whole situation from the beginning-to-present; even bringing up the Coleco Chameleon and dedicating a full paragraph to AtariAge.

 

Also, Lodmot I see you've been busy there too!

 

Lol, yeah. I have no life. xDD

[+Nathan Strum]

"Atari VCS™ Team Officially Welcomes Rob Wyatt, System Architect of Original Xbox® Console and Innovator of Notable Game Hardware and Graphics Projects"

If true that's cool.

 

According to that press release, they've already been working together for "months"...

 

“We have made a commitment to Atari fans to make the VCS the very best game and home entertainment platform it can be,” said Michael Arzt, Atari COO of Connected Devices. “After months of working with Rob and Tin Giant to define product requirements for the Atari VCS hardware and operating system, we are excited to finally and officially announce our partnership. Rob and his experienced team are working to squeeze every possible ounce of performance out of the Atari VCS hardware.”

 

So it's great to see all that collaboration has paid off so well with... uh... product requirements. I guess.

 

But Rob himself is intrigued and inspired!

 

“Who wouldn’t want to be part of bringing Atari back? From the moment the AMD team introduced me to Atari and the VCS project, I have been intrigued and inspired by the opportunity that it represents,” said Rob Wyatt, CEO of Tin Giant. “The unique open platform and modern approach that Atari is taking will let users enjoy a broad range of new and existing games and other entertainment, while also delivering some unique options to customize the platform to their own tastes by combining additional software and classic content all in one place.”

So that's great.

 

Where are the actual "broad range of new and existing games"?

 

I suppose Tempest 4000 is new, and Atari Vault is existing... is that what he means?

[JBerel]

I can't help but pick up on a few ironies in this retrospective about the original X-Box development. Also can't tell if this announcement helps or hurts their effort given how things went on the X-Box. I do know continuing to provide no information of any substance about an actual product or development deals that exist and can be shown does nothing to bolster their credibility.

 

https://venturebeat.com/2011/11/14/making-of-the-xbox-1/view-all/

 

Game developers like Wyatt insisted on using Nvidia because developers were so familiar with making games for it. But Nvidia’s price quotes were much higher than what others offered. Rick Thompson felt like he had been sold a bill of goods, and it took Blackley and Bachus and others a lot of effort to keep Nvidia in the bidding. The nuances of chip economics were new to Microsoft. The price depended on the size of chip, its yield, complexity of design, and ability to be manufactured all came into play.
Team members had unearthed graphics chip design house GigaPixel, which promised to design a brand-new graphics chip with WebTV’s engineering help.
Within the Advanced Technologies Group, there was dismay. To them, GigaPixel was nothing but a bunch of promises.
“This was the worst decision in the entire project,” Rob Wyatt recalled. “Remember, this chip didn’t exist, the proposed architecture was new, and different from their prior design. We never got a working version of that. This was when programmable graphics shaders were coming out and GigaPixel had never made a programmable chip. We knew the box would fail if it used this hardware.”
The ATG team fought to keep Nvidia alive. The chip schedule pushed the launch date into 2001. Chip makers often needed two years to make chips. But Microsoft was pushing a schedule that would give chip vendors a little more than a year to do their work. Wyatt argued so much that he eventually got fired.

[Noel Comix]

What is Atari now actually? I've been following the VCS story basically on You Tube and podcasts. I read a venture beat article from 2016 where CEO Fred Chenais said Atari consisted of 10 people. (https://venturebeat.com/2014/03/26/atari-and-flowplay-team-up-to-offer-social-casino-games/) It seems like they don't have any real capacity to produce meaningful hardware in house which is why the VCS hasnt gotten very far off the ground. Hopfully that changes. Just some thoughts.

Edited June 27, 2018 by Noel Comix

[JBerel]

 

According to that press release, they've already been working together for "months"...

 

 

So it's great to see all that collaboration has paid off so well with... uh... product requirements. I guess.

 

But Rob himself is intrigued and inspired!

 

So that's great.

 

Where are the actual "broad range of new and existing games"?

 

I suppose Tempest 4000 is new, and Atari Vault is existing... is that what he means?

 

"We're gonna have inventive, creative, exclusive, innovative content that you're not gonna find somewhere else. Well, I guess except for Playstation 4, and everything else that has more power that what we're making."

 

Paraphrasing Julie Uhrman, founder and CEO of OUYA at South by Southwest Conference 2013

 

I really think all us "haters" should put on blindfolds and tie one arm behind our backs to make this fair. We've been down this road way too many times already to continue this without a handicap.

 

[tschak909]

@NoelComix: Atari is a licensing front, very much attempting to do a "Donald Trump" model of business.

 

-Thom

Edited June 27, 2018 by tschak909

[Flojomojo]

Meanwhile, while Atari is still putting its pants on, Sega is cornering the market on old-videogame-themed scented candles. Seems like the kind of thing A "Speaker Hat" Tari would want to get into.

 

 

 

(hey jackasses, what does "Spring Blowout" refer to? The season by that name ended a week ago)

 

 

[Phantom_of_Krankor]

You guys should totally trust us! Weve strung you along for almost the entire campaign, but right before the zero hour weve brought a guy in who isn't a stuffed shirt. Well either get him to fit a board inside our case or well blame the entire failure on him. Stick around, its gonna be the bomb-diggity!!

[TheVgaTv]

Meanwhile, while Atari is still putting its pants on, Sega is cornering the market on old-videogame-themed scented candles. Seems like the kind of thing A "Speaker Hat" Tari would want to get into.

 

 

 

(hey jackasses, what does "Spring Blowout" refer to? The season by that name ended a week ago)

 

 

 

 

Anybody else concerned that one of the Mega Drive scents is "John Madden"?

[Phantom_of_Krankor]

Anybody else concerned that one of the Mega Drive scents is "John Madden"?

I’m bummed there isn’t an NHL 94 scent. Nothing quite like the smell of a hockey bag.

[MrMaddog]

Well at least they finally hired someone who knows what they're doing with case design for hardware...

 

The guy who worked on the original Xbox thankfully made a case that was way more practical than what Microsoft originally showed at the GDC announcement...

 

 

Still it would have been much better had Atari SA just simply licenced the design & manufacturing of the VCS to a PC OEM company, like they did with ATGames making & selling the Flashbacks, instead of all this smokle & mirrors BS they've been doing.

[JBerel]

There's a lot to unpack in this section of their press release....

Atari VCS will deliver a fully modern gaming and entertainment experience sure to delight the more than 11,000 backers who have enthusiastically supported the Atari VCS so far during its ongoing Indiegogo Pre-Sale; currently scheduled to end on June 29, 2018. Indiegogo backers and other future Atari VCS owners can plan to have access to a wide array of games, media and streaming content options when the hardware platform ships in mid-2019. Atari plans to make several more product development updates and announcements, along with new partnerships and agreements between now and the first shipments that will include game publishers and developers, product distribution plans, non-gaming content providers and much more. In addition, Atari endeavors to provide unscheduled work-in-progress product demonstrations in the future as they become practical.

 

"..sure to delight the more than 11,000

er, more than 10,500..

..wait....more than 10,000...

..damn it.....more than 8450 backers who have enthusiastically supported Atari VCS."

[Flojomojo]

In addition, Atari endeavors to provide unscheduled work-in-progress product demonstrations in the future as they become practical.

 

 

Translation:

[+frankodragon]

Anyone hoping the numbered systems just have like silver sharpie on the bottom tagged by some Chinese worker in a factory?

 

#354

It'll probably be numbered YD-2768 from Shenzhen, China

[toiletunes]

Ataribox brings in a last minute expert. RVGS had industry experts on day one.

 

RVGS 1

AVCS 0

[tschak909]

meanwhile, Atari continues to license out product:

 

 

-Thom