The Atari VCS Controversies Thread

[TACODON]

Guaranteed shipping for backers in October. Shipping in December for all others.

 

How long until the next excuse?

[zzip]

12 minutes ago, H.Hannig said:

an old Ryzen 3200G APU for ~90€ is about 2 times as powerful as the R1606G and an AsRock A300 Deskmini Barebone costs 140-150€.   

Add in memory, storage and game controllers and you are in the same price range.

[H.Hannig]

1 hour ago, zzip said:

Add in memory, storage and game controllers and you are in the same price range.

Yes but you have a system that is at least 2 times as powerful as the vcs and if you spend another 30-40€ you can get a 3400G instead of the 3200G.  The 3400G is about 3-4 times as powerful as the vcs.

Edited September 4, 2020 by H.Hannig

[racerx]

21 minutes ago, zzip said:

Add in memory, storage and game controllers and you are in the same price range.

Let's face it...the VCS is going to need more storage at the bare minimum as well, and more memory should be on the shopping list, too.

[Tickled_Pink]

It's basically a NUC. And talking of NUCs, here's one that's pretty much complete. They had a recent IndieGoGo campaign, raised around $400,000. They had it already complete but bare in mind that the Ryzen 5 3550H its using is about three to four times faster than what's in the VCS, wasn't even available when Atari did their campaign (so this company's produced it quickly) and I think it's similarly priced?

 

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-next-gen-minis-amd-yes#/updates/all

 

That's how you do it.

[Keatah]

We've been using NUCs for the past 5 years. Shit.. Maybe even longer. And with emulation software they're more "Atari" than anything "atari" is supposedly making.

 

[Matt_B]

5 hours ago, zzip said:

Let me put it this way.   I have a nice PC,  I have a PS4.    I have a couple of Pi's,  I would like a retrogame box hooked up to a TV for casual play.   I find the Pi's to be too weak for what I want, I hate that they don't have proper power control.   I also have a bunch of money from last christmas I never got a chance to spend because of the pandemic.

 

Why not a VCS?  Sure I'm sure I could build a Mini-ITX PC on my own, but how much better can I do for the price?   You can easily spend $300 on a "mainstream" GPU, so it's not like you are going to build a killer gaming system for this price.   And there's something cool about having Atari branded hardware.

I'm not saying that the Pi is going to be a useful system for everyone. It's a very basic computer after all, so things like power control are left to users to implement if they really want it. A switch on the power supply does the job for me but there are fancier remote control solutions if that's what you want. You've certainly got a lot of scope for upgrading it before it starts to creep into the VCS price range though.

 

The point is rather that it can manage all the important features that the VCS is confirmed to ship with, i.e. Plex, AntStream and emulation of older Atari systems, at a fraction of the price. It'll also cover some other low hanging fruit that might later be added if Atari can ever get around to it, such as emulation of non-Atari systems up to the Playstation era, Netflix, Kodi and Steam Link. Or you can boot it in ChromeOS or Linux and use it as a desktop PC. Irrespective of the power of the underlying hardware, the Pi already does more for less than the VCS promises to do out of the box.

 

Rather to get more out of the VCS you are looking at having to mod it by adding an SSD and installing Windows, at which point it's worth considering what your other options are in the way of PC hardware. No, you're not going to get a killer gaming PC for $390, but you could at least build the bones of a system that can later be turned into one and will still outperform the VCS for now. That much ought to get you the aforementioned 3200G, a B450 motherboard, 16GB or RAM and a 240GB SSD. You won't get the case of your dreams and might have to settle for a couple of no-name (PowerA aren't exactly a high-end brand either) controllers but you've at least got the upgrade potential to add a decent graphics card and a better CPU at some point down the line to keep up with trends in PC gaming. The VCS will forever be gimped by the 1606G being soldered to the board though.

 

I won't deny that there's something cool about the case. However, once you consider how little the current owners of the brand have to do with previous Atari hardware and look into the three year rolling car-crash of its development so far, that aspect rather starts to lose its sheen too.

[Keatah]

Since modern day atari doesn't have any hardware engineers maybe they should just sell the case as merch. Let real hobbyists who know things build it out into the ideal system.

[zzip]

18 hours ago, Matt_B said:

I'm not saying that the Pi is going to be a useful system for everyone. It's a very basic computer after all, so things like power control are left to users to implement if they really want it. A switch on the power supply does the job for me but there are fancier remote control solutions if that's what you want. You've certainly got a lot of scope for upgrading it before it starts to creep into the VCS price range though.

I do have a power cable with a switch which works fine for the pi I use as a media center.   But the bigger issue is corruption that can occur if shut down hard.

 

Apart from that.   I've created a custom front-end, but it runs pretty slow on the pi,  I've tried building different emulators for the PI, but only like one in three actually run properly.    

 

Doing this on an x86 box would take a lot of the headache out.

 

18 hours ago, Matt_B said:

Rather to get more out of the VCS you are looking at having to mod it by adding an SSD and installing Windows, at which point it's worth considering what your other options are in the way of PC hardware

My understanding is it's running an open Linux distro and we can mod that how we like to?   Unless Atari's changed that plan as well.   I would not be installing Windows.

 

18 hours ago, Matt_B said:

I won't deny that there's something cool about the case. However, once you consider how little the current owners of the brand have to do with previous Atari hardware and look into the three year rolling car-crash of its development so far, that aspect rather starts to lose its sheen too.

Like I said, my intended use would be retro-box for the living room.   I have a current PC, I don't need another.   I don't mind paying a little more for an Atari branding thing as a collectors item.

 

But it all depends if they ship a decent product.   I've said all along I will wait and see what actually ships before deciding to buy it.

[Matt_B]

Atari have been very cagey about the OS on the VCS so far. It's certainly going to be Linux based, but whether they'll give you root access to install your own applications or get at the bootloader to put a custom OS on there remains an unanswered question. All that's really guaranteed so far (at much as anything ever is with this project) is that you'll be able to boot it into another OS if you put an additional SSD in there. Linux is far from guaranteed to be an easy install either and it usually takes a bit of of work to get all the drivers ironed out on new hardware, and I wouldn't be expecting Atari to do more than the bare minimum to get their own OS working. Windows, on the other hand, is going to work because AMD are obliged to support it.

 

Also, what model of Pi are you using, if you don't mind? The original was certainly very slow and of only marginal performance when it came to emulation or graphically intensive operations, but since they made the move to four cores they've been much snappier. The Pi 4 is generally considered about on a par with a Core 2 CPU from about a decade ago, so unless your idea of retro is newer than the Dreamcast and N64, it ought to be up to the task.

 

Rather than building emulators for the Pi individually, I'd suggest installing the RetroPie or Lakka distros that come with their own front ends, RetroArch and a bunch of cores for all the common systems; they'll all have been tested so all you'd have to do is supply BIOS ROMs and the games themselves to get up and running. Unless you're emulating something very obscure you shouldn't have too much trouble. RetroPie also has Kodi with the more recent builds so you don't have to reboot to use your Pi as a media box either.

 

Anyway, yeah, wait and see. There's usually just a lot of waiting with Atari these days and not much seeing.

[Hwlngmad]

Not sure if the Xbox Series S at $299 necessarily relates to the Atari VCS, but I think it is a just another nail in the VCS's coffin.  I think this will sell to some degree as a niche gaming / PC device.  Aside from that, I think this is probably not long for this earth.

[Bill Loguidice]

38 minutes ago, Hwlngmad said:

Not sure if the Xbox Series S at $299 necessarily relates to the Atari VCS, but I think it is a just another nail in the VCS's coffin.  I think this will sell to some degree as a niche gaming / PC device.  Aside from that, I think this is probably not long for this earth.

I really don't think it has a bearing on the Atari VCS, but I agree with you 100% that it's another indicator that without a unique value proposition or a specific target niche, you have a REALLY hard time competing against the big three and their amazing engineering prowess, resources, and economies of scale. The VCS was already questionable against the existing Xbox One/X and PS4/Pro consoles, but the fact that a system more powerful than either of those will be just $299 is pretty crazy. Of course, the VCS is an "open system," so it might have some appeal to hobbyists that you won't get with something like the Xbox Series S, but the hobbyist market itself is, as we know, already incredibly crowded.

[Agillig]

1 hour ago, Bill Loguidice said:

I really don't think it has a bearing on the Atari VCS, but I agree with you 100% that it's another indicator that without a unique value proposition or a specific target niche, you have a REALLY hard time competing against the big three and their amazing engineering prowess, resources, and economies of scale. The VCS was already questionable against the existing Xbox One/X and PS4/Pro consoles, but the fact that a system more powerful than either of those will be just $299 is pretty crazy. Of course, the VCS is an "open system," so it might have some appeal to hobbyists that you won't get with something like the Xbox Series S, but the hobbyist market itself is, as we know, already incredibly crowded.

Agreed with all this.  But it further kills the idea of the system gaining mass market acceptance.  If/when the system ships to backers, and the first wave of people who want a system but didn't pre-order get one, that's it.  Especially once people understand you're going to have to buy more hardware to really get the most out of the system. 

[Bill Loguidice]

17 minutes ago, Agillig said:

Agreed with all this.  But it further kills the idea of the system gaining mass market acceptance.  If/when the system ships to backers, and the first wave of people who want a system but didn't pre-order get one, that's it.  Especially once people understand you're going to have to buy more hardware to really get the most out of the system. 

I don't think anyone except the most ardent superfan thought this would ever gain mass market acceptance. Atari themselves is not even positioning it to do that at this point by almost every post-crowdfunding action they've taken. Similarly, over on the Amico side, there are some that seem to think it has a shot at mass market acceptance because of its Wii-like targeting of casuals, but the Wii situation was definitely a fluke that would be hard to repeat (and ignoring how the casuals abandoned the system once they lost interest), not to mention how very different the times are with this being post-smartphone/tablet, not pre-, etc.

[AlecRob]

VCS has one thing that no other system will ever have: AN ATARI LOGO ON THE CASE AND PCB! Checkmate! SOLD! I’m IN!

 

 

 

$10 says VCS will outsell amico.  

Edited September 9, 2020 by AlecRob

[Matt_B]

Price aside, I'd think that the Series S holds another serious advantage in that Microsoft are almost certainly going to hit their street date with it.

[+Stephen]

8 hours ago, AlecRob said:

VCS has one thing that no other system will ever have: AN ATARI LOGO ON THE CASE AND PCB! Checkmate! SOLD! I’m IN!

 

$10 says VCS will outsell amico.  

The logo means absolutely nothing.  Just because I stick a Dodge Challenger and HEMI logo on a piece of shit Kia Rio, it doesn't make the car a Dodge.

[Bill Loguidice]

10 hours ago, AlecRob said:

$10 says VCS will outsell amico.  

That's an interesting take. Based on what we've heard, the Amico has already handily outsold (out pre-sold to be more accurate) the VCS so the assumption would be that the VCS would somehow get a big sales boost post release. From what, though? At least with Amico, they'll have a pretty large launch window line-up to goose some more sales.

[+Stephen]

10 minutes ago, Bill Loguidice said:

That's an interesting take. Based on what we've heard, the Amico has already handily outsold (out pre-sold to be more accurate) the VCS so the assumption would be that the VCS would somehow get a big sales boost post release. From what, though? At least with Amico, they'll have a pretty large launch window line-up to goose some more sales.

But it doesn't have the Atari logo on it.  That made the 7800, Lynx, and Jaguar really outsell the competition.

[Matt_B]

7 hours ago, Bill Loguidice said:

That's an interesting take. Based on what we've heard, the Amico has already handily outsold (out pre-sold to be more accurate) the VCS so the assumption would be that the VCS would somehow get a big sales boost post release. From what, though? At least with Amico, they'll have a pretty large launch window line-up to goose some more sales.

An easy to envisage scenario is that the Amico backers take stock of the market they'll be launching into after Microsoft dropped that bombshell, and decide to pull the plug on the hardware. The preorders get cancelled, the games get ported over to existing systems, and not too much money goes down the drain.

 

Atari could then score a Pyrrhic victory by eventually dribbling out enough units to fulfill the crowdfunding. They can then cancel the other preorders and who cares about porting the games because they never made any.

 

That sounds plausible enough to me at least, although I'm sure reality can come up with something even more ridiculous.

 

9 hours ago, Stephen said:

The logo means absolutely nothing.  Just because I stick a Dodge Challenger and HEMI logo on a piece of shit Kia Rio, it doesn't make the car a Dodge.

Yeah, they're like one of those Chinese car companies that bought a defunct marque from twenty years ago so they can sell to befuddled old brand loyalists.

[Agillig]

9 hours ago, Stephen said:

But it doesn't have the Atari logo on it.  That made the 7800, Lynx, and Jaguar really outsell the competition.

None of those consoles had real wood though.  Checkmate!

[racerx]

2 hours ago, Matt_B said:

Yeah, they're like one of those Chinese car companies that bought a defunct marque from twenty years ago so they can sell to befuddled old brand loyalists.

Change "Chinese car companies" to "French software publishers" and that's literally what happened.

[AlecRob]

10 hours ago, Matt_B said:

Yeah, they're like one of those Chinese car companies that bought a defunct marque from twenty years ago so they can sell to befuddled old brand loyalists.

I’m not old or a brand loyalist. I’m just a young dude that thinks atari stuff has a cool aesthetic. 

 

i was born in 1995.  I have pretty much zero atari nostalgia.
 

how many times do i have to bring up that the 7800, Lynx, ST, and Jaguar weren’t even designed by the original atari engineers/team in sunnyvale, california.  Oh and the now-obscure Atari IBM PC compatible series of hardware, that the new VCS could be considered a descendent of... also not designed by the OG atari.  You pretty much have to get a heavy sixer, pong machine, atari 400/800 and other really early devices if you want ORIGINAL ORIGINAL atari. 

 I find the “not atari” argument to be really flimsy because of that.  People using that argument must hate the Lynx!! 
 

“Wah waahhh it’s an EPYX console!! Burn it at the stake!”    
 

atari ST was designed by an ex commodore employee.  Amiga was designed by an ex atari employee!  FFS

 

 

if you buy an intellectual property, it belongs to you.  atari, SA bought atari.  For l intents and purposes, they have every right to do business under that name.  They are a real company, they own it fair and square.
 

Imagine if sega announced a new console and sega fans bitched about it like atari fans today are bitching about the VCS. That would be unthinkable!  Sega fans have been asking for a console for years, and i have no doubt they would snatch up whatever they put out without a second thought...even if it was a console-shaped PC like the VCS.     

Edited September 10, 2020 by AlecRob

[MrBeefy]

1 hour ago, AlecRob said:

I’m not old or a brand loyalist. I’m just a young dude that thinks atari stuff has a cool aesthetic. 

 

i was born in 1995.  I have pretty much zero atari nostalgia.
 

how many times do i have to bring up that the 7800, Lynx, ST, and Jaguar weren’t even designed by the original atari engineers/team in sunnyvale, california.  Oh and the now-obscure Atari IBM PC compatible series of hardware, that the new VCS could be considered a descendent of... also not designed by the OG atari.  You pretty much have to get a heavy sixer, pong machine, atari 400/800 and other really early devices if you want ORIGINAL ORIGINAL atari. 

 I find the “not atari” argument to be really flimsy because of that.  People using that argument must hate the Lynx!! 
 

“Wah waahhh it’s an EPYX console!! Burn it at the stake!”    
 

atari ST was designed by an ex commodore employee.  Amiga was designed by an ex atari employee!  FFS

 

 

if you buy an intellectual property, it belongs to you.  atari, SA bought atari.  For l intents and purposes, they have every right to do business under that name.  They are a real company, they own it fair and square.
 

Imagine if sega announced a new console and sega fans bitched about it like atari fans today are bitching about the VCS. That would be unthinkable!  Sega fans have been asking for a console for years, and i have no doubt they would snatch up whatever they put out without a second thought...even if it was a console-shaped PC like the VCS.     

I think you kind of miss the point. I know there are a bunch of people here who debate the "real Atari", but there are those of us who don't care about it either. 

 

It really has more to do with how much of this has been a crap show from Atari. Their campaign was handled horribly and was a joke. I was excited by the announcement early on until they kept doing dumb stuff. That has nothing to do with them being the real Atari or not, but mishandling things.

 

If Sega went down the same path and did the same things Atari did with the Ataribox you could bet people would be upset with them too 

 

[IntelliMission]

12 hours ago, Matt_B said:

An easy to envisage scenario is that the Amico backers take stock of the market they'll be launching into after Microsoft dropped that bombshell, and decide to pull the plug on the hardware. The preorders get cancelled, the games get ported over to existing systems, and not too much money goes down the drain.

There are 2 huge problems with that theory, though:

 

1) The Amico doens't have "backers". It has investors, and Tommy is using some of his personal fortune too. There's no way this thing is not going to get launched.

 

2) The Amico doesn't compete with any Xbox, even if it the Xbox costs $300. Only a handful of potential Amico buyers that also are harcore gamers (most of them are retro gamers, casual and non gamers instead) will get an Xbox Series S instead of an Amico due to the Xbox "price bomb".

Edited September 10, 2020 by IntelliMission