digdugnate Posted December 17, 2019 Share Posted December 17, 2019 this was mentioned before in the thread, but now it's 'officially' on Medium- https://medium.com/@atarivcs/guidance-for-atari-vcs-content-developers-go-760d5522370d 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flojomojo Posted December 17, 2019 Share Posted December 17, 2019 Yet another off-the-shelf service that can (and should) be used almost everywhere else. At least they're not pretending anyone should be impressed. Maybe they should also put out an announcement of the fabulous components on the motherboard. HDMI, Ethernet, WiFi, USB, and Bluetooth would be amazing to someone frozen at the time of peak Atari. Coming soon: PONG AT HOME! Only $99 1976 bucks ($442 in 2019 bucks) Astounding! 7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Inky Posted December 17, 2019 Share Posted December 17, 2019 43 minutes ago, digdugnate said: this was mentioned before in the thread, but now it's 'officially' on Medium- https://medium.com/@atarivcs/guidance-for-atari-vcs-content-developers-go-760d5522370d Better late than never, or better never late? 1 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Inky Posted December 17, 2019 Share Posted December 17, 2019 (edited) Btw, the #notmyatari bootlickers on the Atariage Facebook page are hilarious. Edited December 17, 2019 by Inky 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
digdugnate Posted December 17, 2019 Share Posted December 17, 2019 3 minutes ago, Inky said: Btw, the #notmyatari bootlickers on the Atariage Facebook page are hilarious. lol i had to look. 'lord have mercy' 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OCAT Posted December 17, 2019 Share Posted December 17, 2019 One thing gets me, they say that they had to reduce cost to $199 to sell it in stores like Walmart and StopGame becuase they will not allow it to cost more, That seems skeezy a reason as ever, I think it is because Walmart wanted a big cut, and instead of Atari selling it at cost, THEY also want to make $$$ from hardware knowing they have very little chance of making any back through software. So instead following what Apple does and cut costs on STORAGE, they cut cost on the second most important thing in a PC Computer (becuase that is what it is) they cut RAM!!!!! Even other videogame systems cut the optical drive first and made it download only. For crying out loud that is fragmentation if ever and a good way to discourage a DEV to port a game. I would have just cut cost in the case and assembly, make that low cost SOB like the Atari 5200, a big box and just shove everything in with room to spare, slap a big glowing Atari logo on the front, and BAM! a dream collector item. 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PlaysWithWolves Posted December 17, 2019 Share Posted December 17, 2019 1 hour ago, digdugnate said: this was mentioned before in the thread, but now it's 'officially' on Medium- https://medium.com/@atarivcs/guidance-for-atari-vcs-content-developers-go-760d5522370d They want VR games, guys! 1 7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul Slocum Posted December 17, 2019 Share Posted December 17, 2019 15 hours ago, CPUWIZ said: Speaking of under powered, the Pi4 kicks ass. It's great, but the software and drivers have got a little ways to go depending on what you're doing. I've been setting up browser kiosks on it, and it's fast enough for some stuff I'm doing but not quite fast enough for others, and it's a bit buggy compared to the 3. By the end of next year it will probably be a lot farther a long. I want to port some of my software from the 3 to the 4, but there's not really enough documentation or APIs exposed for me to do what I need. The Pi 4 works really well with the Flirc case, it's passive but with a massive heat sink and I've been able to overclock to 2Ghz without issue. 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheVgaTv Posted December 17, 2019 Share Posted December 17, 2019 So if you go exclusive to the VCS, you get 88% in royalties, but if it's non-exclusive it's 80%. On a $50 the royalty would be $44 compared to $40, so a $4 per unit difference by going exclusive. With a user base out of the gate somewhere in the 10k range, there isn't a lot of opportunity to sell. But let's go overly optimistic and assume a company sells 5k units. That would be $20k for going exclusive. So basically there aren't going to be any exclusive games for the system that isn't first party. 8 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+x=usr(1536) Posted December 17, 2019 Share Posted December 17, 2019 6 minutes ago, TheVgaTv said: So if you go exclusive to the VCS, you get 88% in royalties, but if it's non-exclusive it's 80%. On a $50 the royalty would be $44 compared to $40, so a $4 per unit difference by going exclusive. With a user base out of the gate somewhere in the 10k range, there isn't a lot of opportunity to sell. But let's go overly optimistic and assume a company sells 5k units. That would be $20k for going exclusive. So basically there aren't going to be any exclusive games for the system that isn't first party. Being generous and assuming that a single developer (as in one person literally handling all aspects of development) can crank out a market-worthy game in six months, a $20K best-case return on a game that ate up half a year of your life just isn't worth it. Sure, if you can do that in your spare time after working your day job, maybe - but even from a first-party perspective it's difficult to see where the ROI comes in. But who needs exclusives when you can game, stream, and connect Steam and Antstream on your Ataribollocks(tm) like no other platform, amirite? 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheVgaTv Posted December 17, 2019 Share Posted December 17, 2019 4 minutes ago, x=usr(1536) said: Being generous and assuming that a single developer (as in one person literally handling all aspects of development) can crank out a market-worthy game in six months, a $20K best-case return on a game that ate up half a year of your life just isn't worth it. Sure, if you can do that in your spare time after working your day job, maybe - but even from a first-party perspective it's difficult to see where the ROI comes in. But who needs exclusives when you can game, stream, and connect Steam and Antstream on your Ataribollocks(tm) like no other platform, amirite? Oh and I was being extra generous. The best selling game on the Ouya only sold 7k copies, and they had an initial launch of over 63k consoles. In reality unless it's a pack-in game, no title is going to sell to 50% of the consoles. 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lodmot Posted December 17, 2019 Share Posted December 17, 2019 (edited) Even with the new update they gave us, they literally shared almost nothing new. They tried to point us where we can fill out a form to sign up to be a VCS developer, but it literally just points you to www.atarivcs.com. I looked all over the website and there is STILL no "form" of any kind to fill out to be a VCS developer. From Update #21: Edited December 17, 2019 by Lodmot 3 7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PlaysWithWolves Posted December 17, 2019 Share Posted December 17, 2019 Keep in mind we don't know how many Walmart and GameStop pre-orders they have. That brings up another subject. With what pre-order number do you think Atari would feel compelled to brag about? Do you think of they made 100,000 they'd put out a press release? 7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JBerel Posted December 17, 2019 Share Posted December 17, 2019 1 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheVgaTv Posted December 17, 2019 Share Posted December 17, 2019 17 minutes ago, PlaysWithWolves said: Keep in mind we don't know how many Walmart and GameStop pre-orders they have. That brings up another subject. With what pre-order number do you think Atari would feel compelled to brag about? Do you think of they made 100,000 they'd put out a press release? It has to be extremely minimal. If they had a thousand between them I'd be shocked, especially considering they haven't shown a single game for it. They only got 10k units sold during their IGG campaign when they were the most visible. 8 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ColecoJoe Posted December 17, 2019 Share Posted December 17, 2019 29 minutes ago, Lodmot said: Even with the new update they gave us, they literally shared almost nothing new. They tried to point us where we can fill out a form to sign up to be a VCS developer, but it literally just points you to www.atarivcs.com. I looked all over the website and there is STILL no "form" of any kind to fill out to be a VCS developer. From Update #21: According to this guy ... just start programming in Unity. 1 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lodmot Posted December 17, 2019 Share Posted December 17, 2019 5 minutes ago, JBerel said: For some reason when I saw this GIF, I thought it was one of these guys: 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+TwentySixHundred Posted December 17, 2019 Share Posted December 17, 2019 The question is why would anyone want to develop for the system? Atari SA probably wouldn't even pay their software devs just like they ripped off their hardware dev. 7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flojomojo Posted December 17, 2019 Share Posted December 17, 2019 1 hour ago, PlaysWithWolves said: They want VR games, guys! If "ATARI VCS" VR sells through at the same 4% rate as Steam or Playstation users, there could be as many as 500 buyers for such things. You'd have to really want this to happen, and might want to delay it to make it even better. 50 minutes ago, PlaysWithWolves said: Keep in mind we don't know how many Walmart and GameStop pre-orders they have. That brings up another subject. With what pre-order number do you think Atari would feel compelled to brag about? Do you think if they made 100,000 they'd put out a press release? They only like to share good news. That's why they don't say much, and why "when it comes to Atari VCS, no news is good news" is so insulting. I believe they shut down the IGG to hide the total lack of interest after the first day. Pictures are from here. By closing their campaign and "InDemand" store, they also get to free up the 5% reserve funds held by Indiegogo. This happens 6 months after closure. The ATARI VCS team knows all the tricks for getting and keeping your money, even if they don't seem very good at other aspects of business. 5 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+x=usr(1536) Posted December 17, 2019 Share Posted December 17, 2019 1 hour ago, TheVgaTv said: Oh and I was being extra generous. The best selling game on the Ouya only sold 7k copies, and they had an initial launch of over 63k consoles. In reality unless it's a pack-in game, no title is going to sell to 50% of the consoles. Not to beat a dead horse any further into the ground, but this is yet another example of where the numbers on the Ataribollocks don't add up. This device may well be the shitshow that puts Atari back into bankruptcy. If that happens, we can only but hope that it's sold to people who don't treat it like Fred & Co. have. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+x=usr(1536) Posted December 17, 2019 Share Posted December 17, 2019 (edited) 29 minutes ago, Flojomojo said: If "ATARI VCS" VR sells through at the same 4% rate as Steam or Playstation users, there could be as many as 500 buyers for such things. You'd have to really want this to happen, and might want to delay it to make it even better. Yeah, but you know what those platforms didn't have? Custer's Revenge VR, that's what. Mark my words, this is totally gonna be the holistic ecosystem's bomb-diggity killer blockchain speakerhat. Edited December 17, 2019 by x=usr(1536) 8 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flojomojo Posted December 17, 2019 Share Posted December 17, 2019 2 minutes ago, x=usr(1536) said: This device may well be the shitshow that puts Atari back into bankruptcy. If that happens, we can only but hope that it's sold to people who don't treat it like Fred & Co. have. It will only go there if Fred drives it there. From everything we have seen so far, they do not seem to be pouring vast amounts of resources into the project. That changes once they go into mass production, product delivery, and need to start paying for their XSolla store and support lines. They still have plenty of excuses they're holding back. 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrBeefy Posted December 17, 2019 Share Posted December 17, 2019 3 hours ago, OCAT said: One thing gets me, they say that they had to reduce cost to $199 to sell it in stores like Walmart and StopGame becuase they will not allow it to cost more, That seems skeezy a reason as ever, I think it is because Walmart wanted a big cut, and instead of Atari selling it at cost, THEY also want to make $$$ from hardware knowing they have very little chance of making any back through software. So instead following what Apple does and cut costs on STORAGE, they cut cost on the second most important thing in a PC Computer (becuase that is what it is) they cut RAM!!!!! Even other videogame systems cut the optical drive first and made it download only. For crying out loud that is fragmentation if ever and a good way to discourage a DEV to port a game. I would have just cut cost in the case and assembly, make that low cost SOB like the Atari 5200, a big box and just shove everything in with room to spare, slap a big glowing Atari logo on the front, and BAM! a dream collector item. Might have something to do with it being in the online store only. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flojomojo Posted December 17, 2019 Share Posted December 17, 2019 Hey, it's one of those days where "Atari" remembers to log in! 8 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Agillig Posted December 17, 2019 Share Posted December 17, 2019 Yikes. That's about $800, right? 1 7 1 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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