The Atari VCS Controversies Thread

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11 hours ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

No they weren't perfect, but they managed the brand far better than Infogrames has, IMO. They actually created things that kept some semblance of the Atari spirit and brand alive until the Jaguar died. They may not have had a lot of product engineers, but they had some, along with some coders. Atari SA has zero.

Infogrames was doing fine at first,  bringing in much-needed new IPs under the Atari label.  But then something happened and they became a shell of what they were.  

 

The Tramiels completely blew Atari's lead in console games, they let Nintendo swoop in and conquer the market without much of a fight because they were so focused on the ST.   So they hadn't exactly been good stewards of the brand.

11 hours ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

As for their product delays, apples and oranges with the VCS. The Tramiels didn't take consumer money with nothing more than an idea on paper, then play the game of moving goal posts for three years.

Crowdfunding wasn't a thing back then, so it's impossible to say if they would have or wouldn't have done it.  What's gone on with with the Atari VCS crowdfunding isn't unique to Atari.  Look at Star Citizen's crowdfunding sometime.

 

11 hours ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

Delays that did take place, with things like the 7800, were due to disputes over who should pay GCC for the development (Warner or Tramiel, took a while to settle). Regardless, the Tramiels did deliver on plenty - the XE, ST, STe, TT, Falcon, 7800, XEGS, Lynx, Jaguar, and getting games made for those systems.

And there were a lot of things they promised and never delivered or delivered late.   The STe, Falcon, Jaguar came too late to have meaningful impact.  The Lynx was an accident.  Epyx offered it to them.  The XEGS was low-effort.  The XE line were cheaply-made XLs.    As far as software, when the 7800 released, the released the same games that were supposed to be launch titles in 84.   Most of those games were already old-hat in 84, and here they were releasing them in 86, while Nintendo was releasing things like SMB.    They were slow getting new IP's and never got anything that was competitive enough with what Nintendo and Sega were doing

[Chopsus]

We ain’t gunna see the likes of that with French Atari

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4 hours ago, Matt_B said:

Sure, product development can be messy, but there's no requirement to launch a crowdfunding campaign when all you've got to show is a few lumps of plastic and some mocked-up footage.

The whole point of crowdfunding is to raise money to bring your idea to life.

 

4 hours ago, Matt_B said:

Rather, most people serious about making hardware would construct a working prototype first - using their own money and behind closed doors like you say - and the fact that Atari didn't do this is what shows them to be a bunch of chancers.

This product couldn't never exist in the traditional sense.   The media would look at it as a foolish attempt to compete with the big 3 and write it off completely.   Instead they went straight to the public with the concept and generated a lot of buzz.  Like it or not, this is how niche markets work in the 21st century. 

 

It's not like the old Atari started with working prototypes.   The ST barely worked and was extremely fragile when they showed it off at CES.   There was a lot of skepticism in the industry that the thing would ever make it to manufacturing.

[Bill Loguidice]

35 minutes ago, zzip said:

The whole point of crowdfunding is to raise money to bring your idea to life.

It's a shame that Indiegogo hasn't changed policy, but Kickstarter changed its policy for exactly this reason. For the latter, you now are supposed to have a working prototype before you ask for production money. That's not a big ask and frankly something that should have been in place from day 1 at all of these sites. That would have cut down on the number of failures and years-long delays. As you know, there's a big difference between an idea and actually shepherding that idea to a full-blown commercial product. 

 

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This product couldn't never exist in the traditional sense.   The media would look at it as a foolish attempt to compete with the big 3 and write it off completely.   Instead they went straight to the public with the concept and generated a lot of buzz.  Like it or not, this is how niche markets work in the 21st century. 

But it IS a foolish attempt to compete with the big three or any other company with actual resources like an Nvidia, so that couldn't have been their approach anyway. All Atari would have had to have done to get around that issue is create a compelling argument for why their product needs to be on the market, i.e., what problem it's trying to solve or what it's offering that you can't get elsewhere. They never did that, which is why the buzz and response was and is relatively muted, even before all the delays and missteps. Around 10,000 orders for the console portion is not exactly a rousing success, and I think most of us can agree there's little realistic path forward to boost those numbers post release given the price and all the other stuff that's either already out or coming.

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It's not like the old Atari started with working prototypes.   The ST barely worked and was extremely fragile when they showed it off at CES.   There was a lot of skepticism in the industry that the thing would ever make it to manufacturing.

Different company, different times, and that was often the way things were done, so nothing unusual there. As others have pointed out, Atari still had resources at its disposal and still had internal talent to drive these projects forward, so skepticism from some circles or not, it was still expected they'd release something. And to be fair to the ST, it broke quite a few price and power barriers, so they did deliver and then some (actual long-term success is a different issue).

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6 minutes ago, Bill Loguidice said:

But it IS a foolish attempt to compete with the big three or any other company with actual resources like an Nvidia, so that couldn't have been their approach anyway. All Atari would have had to have done to get around that issue is create a compelling argument for why their product needs to be on the market, i.e., what problem it's trying to solve or what it's offering that you can't get elsewhere. They never did that, which is why the buzz and response was and is relatively muted, even before all the delays and missteps. Around 10,000 orders for the console portion is not exactly a rousing success, and I think most of us can agree there's little realistic path forward to boost those numbers post release given the price and all the other stuff that's either already out or coming.

I think the main problem Atari is they've fallen so far.  To me, this looks like an attempt to raise the profile of the brand again.   They are not capable of competing with the big 3.   So yes, they are creating a niche product.  It was always going to be a niche product.   But what else are they going to do?   Keep making bad Roller Coaster Tycoon spin-offs until the money completely dries up?

[fultonbot]

27 minutes ago, Bill Loguidice said:

Around 10,000 orders for the console portion is not exactly a rousing success, and I think most of us can agree there's little realistic path forward to boost those numbers post release given the price and all the other stuff that's either already out or coming.

 

Yeah, 10,000 is not a lot.  Even for expensive "PR projects" that we make at the toy company I work for,  ones we know will lose money but we still make them for street cred, even WITH our massive economies of scale,  25K is usually MOQ, if not 50K. 

[+x=usr(1536)]

1 hour ago, zzip said:

This product couldn't never exist in the traditional sense.   The media would look at it as a foolish attempt to compete with the big 3 and write it off completely.   Instead they went straight to the public with the concept and generated a lot of buzz.  Like it or not, this is how niche markets work in the 21st century.

You're absolutely correct in that they involved the public and generated a lot of buzz.  However, the majority of that buzz seems to be ranging from skeptical to negative.  Given the public's reliance on opinion (e.g. Amazon reviews, etc.) to make purchasing decisions, this doesn't put Nutari on a solid footing to ship more consoles after the first batch may be sent out to the backers.

 

Also, take into consideration that we haven't seen any reviews of the production hardware yet.  It's not difficult to imagine the field day that the gaming press will have with it if they ever get their hands on what's basically a $400 Linux PC with a not-particularly-powerful and antiquated hardware spec.

 

About the best outcome I can see for this is that Nutari can say, "look, we did a thing!" while trying to sweep their own incompetence in getting to even that point under the rug.  And we all know how that goes on the Internet.

 

1 hour ago, zzip said:

It's not like the old Atari started with working prototypes.   The ST barely worked and was extremely fragile when they showed it off at CES.   There was a lot of skepticism in the industry that the thing would ever make it to manufacturing.

Right, but that comes back to the point about experience and ability to execute.  Say what you will about Jack Tramiel (and I'm no great fan of his either), but he came to Atari with the experience of developing products, manufacturing them, and then getting them into retail channels.  Nutari has none of that, unless we really stretch the point to digital delivery of software.

 

The ST and its successors were able to enjoy a roughly 9-year lifespan in the market; at this point, Nutari's burned one-third of that product lifespan with nothing to show for it.

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4 minutes ago, x=usr(1536) said:

Also, take into consideration that we haven't seen any reviews of the production hardware yet.  It's not difficult to imagine the field day that the gaming press will have with it if they ever get their hands on what's basically a $400 Linux PC with a not-particularly-powerful and antiquated hardware spec.

If they compare it to Sony/Microsoft consoles, it will come up short,  but Atari doesn't have the volume those companies do, so they can't get that kind of power for that price.   The bigger selling point here is the fact that it's open, and you can make it do what you want.   It would make a great retro box, it will be able to play modern games that don't hit 3D too hard (there's lots of them in the Steam store).  It will appeal to people who like the idea of having an Atari branded console again.   It was never going to sell a ton.

 

9 minutes ago, x=usr(1536) said:

Right, but that comes back to the point about experience and ability to execute.  Say what you will about Jack Tramiel (and I'm no great fan of his either), but he came to Atari with the experience of developing products, manufacturing them, and then getting them into retail channels

Yes he could do those things,  but he was also good at burning bridges, didn't understand the gaming market and seemed to think that always "selling it as cheap as possible" was the way to win, because it worked our for him once.

 

 

[Bill Loguidice]

45 minutes ago, zzip said:

If they compare it to Sony/Microsoft consoles, it will come up short,  but Atari doesn't have the volume those companies do, so they can't get that kind of power for that price.   The bigger selling point here is the fact that it's open, and you can make it do what you want.   It would make a great retro box, it will be able to play modern games that don't hit 3D too hard (there's lots of them in the Steam store).  It will appeal to people who like the idea of having an Atari branded console again.   It was never going to sell a ton.

Even if they had the volume, they don't have the engineers to design the console, the staff to court the necessary developer/publisher relationships, and countless other things you need to have in place for a successful pre-launch, launch, and post-launch support. There are a lot more reasons consoles from Microsoft and Sony (and Nintendo) do what they do than just volume. If you want a console release in any type of volume, you need to have a lot more than just a vague idea of what you want to release and do something more than assemble off-the-shelf parts in low volume. There never was a plan here. The fact that they got around 10,000 people to buy-in and some people are excited for another retro project box is a small miracle likely made possible solely by the remaining power of the Atari name and has little to do with any type of thought or execution put into this. That's the big negative to me. They've basically done the barest minimum here and got the barest minimum results.

[Shaggy the Atarian]

3 hours ago, zzip said:

Infogrames was doing fine at first,  bringing in much-needed new IPs under the Atari label.  But then something happened and they became a shell of what they were.  

 

The Tramiels completely blew Atari's lead in console games, they let Nintendo swoop in and conquer the market without much of a fight because they were so focused on the ST.   So they hadn't exactly been good stewards of the brand.

Crowdfunding wasn't a thing back then, so it's impossible to say if they would have or wouldn't have done it.  What's gone on with with the Atari VCS crowdfunding isn't unique to Atari.  Look at Star Citizen's crowdfunding sometime.

 

And there were a lot of things they promised and never delivered or delivered late.   The STe, Falcon, Jaguar came too late to have meaningful impact.  The Lynx was an accident.  Epyx offered it to them.  The XEGS was low-effort.  The XE line were cheaply-made XLs.    As far as software, when the 7800 released, the released the same games that were supposed to be launch titles in 84.   Most of those games were already old-hat in 84, and here they were releasing them in 86, while Nintendo was releasing things like SMB.    They were slow getting new IP's and never got anything that was competitive enough with what Nintendo and Sega were doing

Infogrames was a different company too back in 2003.  Have you seen how many CEOs the company has burned through since they grabbed the Atari name? They're like the Fleetwood Mac of video games.  That's one of my issues with comparing them to the old Atari in any way - previous caretakers had a vision for the company beyond just making money. Nolan launched it with "Innovative leisure," and Warner mostly kept that in mind. Atari SA is more "chase any fad that will get someone to buy us up so I can retire to a Greek island."

 

You are oversimplifying what happened with the Tramiels. Warner sold Atari because they blew things with how they handled the company. The Tramiels didn't have the money to do the same thing that Warner could, so it's a ridiculous expectation to think that they could have just picked up where Warner left off. Like I said, they made mistakes, but they were far better at working the brand than what I've seen Infogrames do. They also couldn't launch the Atari 7800 in July '84 as the company had promised before the purchase, as there was a major dispute over who was supposed to pay GCC for the development of it all. That wasn't resolved until '86. Obviously it made sense for the company to revive all of the games that were practically ready to print in '86 when that huge obstacle was out of the way, since the games were ready to go. It is a shame that they didn't have a vision as to how to compete with the 7800, and I agree that the XEGS was a lazy cash-in. But it was still handled better than how Atari SA has handled the VCS. It's also worth noting that all of their systems launched with, or eventually grabbed, exclusive titles. The VCS still has zero (and come to think of it, the XEGS let you install your own OS on it, so it won that battle first too  ).

 

You also forget that a lot of people in 1984, due to the game crash, thought that the future of gaming was to be found solely in PCs. The Tramiels knew PCs and made the bet that it was going to be the market to own.  They lost against the likes of IBM PCs and Commodore, but at the time they got the ST off the ground, it made sense to go in that direction. As you said, developing a product is no easy task, and it's rather incredible that the company was able to get the ST out as quickly as they did.

 

They also still had the 2600 on the market (5200 was DOA before the Tramiels bought it anyways), but even if they released a huge line-up of 2600 games in '85, do you really think that would have made a dent by using an aging game console against a shiny new system with fresh new games? On top of that Japanese devs exploded onto the scene overall in 1984, they didn't just dominate the console space, but they dominated the more-important at the time arcade space. You can't blame the Tramiels for Konami, Capcom, Sega, Taito and others becoming household names through their coin-op games. 

 

No, crowdfunding didn't exist in the '80s, but that wasn't the point. The point is that the Tramiels put real risk into creating their products. Atari SA has done everything they could to get something for nothing and inflate their value. No it's not unique, but does that make it ok? In addition to Star Citizen, there have been big scams where dumb investors got caught up in the hype and send a company millions or even billions of dollars based on promises (look up the Magic Leap debacle). 

 

In watching this unfold over the past several years, Atari has been throwing everything at the wall in the hopes of getting bought up by someone else with deep pockets. That have literally used every single crowdfunding scheme that has popped up out there in the hopes of getting something. So crap like the VCS, themed-hotels, cryptocurrency, the Game Band, etc., has been nothing more than an attempt at creating fake value so that Fred can get a bigger golden parachute than he would off of a constantly aging brand that hasn't been known for innovation in over 30 years. That's not my conjecture, Mr. Chesnais has made it clear that he's been trying to sell the company for quite some time now. Which is why I have to imagine that Fred was screaming at the walls yesterday when Microsoft bought up Zenimax. 

Edited September 22, 2020 by Shaggy the Atarian

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22 minutes ago, Bill Loguidice said:

Even if they had the volume, they don't have the engineers to design the console, the staff to court the necessary developer/publisher relationships, and countless other things you need to have in place for a successful pre-launch, launch, and post-launch support

Well all this goes hand in hand, you don't get to that volume without all those people working to make a company that successful.   This is why Atari went with an open system that can already run thousands of games, and they don't need to attract developers to a proprietary platform. 

 

25 minutes ago, Bill Loguidice said:

The fact that they got around 10,000 people to buy-in and some people are excited for another retro project box is a small miracle likely made possible solely by the remaining power of the Atari name and has little to do with any type of thought or execution put into this. That's the big negative to me. They've basically done the barest minimum here and got the barest minimum results.

I just don't think they have the resources to pull off much more than they did.    If they did anything proprietary, they would struggle getting developers on board and the games library would be even worse than the Jag. 

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14 minutes ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

You are oversimplifying what happened with the Tramiels. Warner sold Atari because they blew things with how they handled the company. The Tramiels didn't have the money to do the same thing that Warner could, so it's a ridiculous expectation to think that they could have just picked up where Warner left off.

Warner Atari was working to restructure the company that was bleeding cash,  and Tramiel approached them because he wanted the name.  Warner saw an easy way to get rid of a massive headache and took it.   Let's say Jack never left Commodore.   The sale wouldn't have happened, and Warner would have continued on their path.

 

Tramiel wanted the Atari brand to sell his new ST computer line.  That was their primary focus.  Videogames were secondary and were not given the attention needed to stay competative in the market.  Maybe they didn't have resources to do both, fine.  But history shows that proprietary computing platforms were a dead-end,  but proprietary videogame consoles were not.   The Tramiels didn't realize that until it was too late.

 

So I don't think the Tramiels would have picked up where Warner left off, because they had a completely different focus.  But if the sale didn't happen, and Warner Atari survived, they had a 7800 ready to go that wasn't tied up with red-tape, they had a video-game marketing apparatus that would have been ready to go to take on Nintendo once the market picked up.  They may have realized computers are a dead-end sooner than the Tramiels did and pulled the plug.   Who knows if they would have released a 16-bit line?   Their plans for the Amiga chips was a future console.

48 minutes ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

You also forget that a lot of people in 1984, due to the game crash, thought that the future of gaming was to be found solely in PCs.

Yes a lot of people thought that in 84, included Jack.   However Warner Atari was not one of them,  they intended to launch a new console in 84 despite all the wreckage.

[Shaggy the Atarian]

35 minutes ago, zzip said:

Warner Atari was working to restructure the company that was bleeding cash,  and Tramiel approached them because he wanted the name.  Warner saw an easy way to get rid of a massive headache and took it.   Let's say Jack never left Commodore.   The sale wouldn't have happened, and Warner would have continued on their path.

 

So I don't think the Tramiels would have picked up where Warner left off, because they had a completely different focus.  But if the sale didn't happen, and Warner Atari survived, they had a 7800 ready to go that wasn't tied up with red-tape, they had a video-game marketing apparatus that would have been ready to go to take on Nintendo once the market picked up.  They may have realized computers are a dead-end sooner than the Tramiels did and pulled the plug.   Who knows if they would have released a 16-bit line?   Their plans for the Amiga chips was a future console.

Yes a lot of people thought that in 84, included Jack.   However Warner Atari was not one of them,  they intended to launch a new console in 84 despite all the wreckage.

Uhhh, no. Warner panicked when they saw that the bottom had fallen out of Atari under Ray Kassar's rule and the Warner CEO stupidly promised $20m for E.T. They went out and started looking for a buyer, but coincidentally they found Jack not long after they started looking. But they did court other buyers. They also hired a replacement for Kassar, then didn't tell him what their ultimate intentions were to sell the company, so that guy just kept working like things were fine as he scaled back on some of the excess that Kassar had brought in, along with stuff like the 7800, elaborate arcade games like The Last Starfighter and a bunch of computers. All of this is laid out in extreme detail, along with the negotiations in the book Atari Inc. - Business Is Fun. It's too bad that the book about the Tramiel era, Business is War, might never be published now that Curt is gone, I'm sure that would give a lot more insight into what happened during their time. 

 

As for the 16-bit line under Warner, yes, two were in the early stages of development when the company was sold to the Tramiel family, one was code-named Sierra, the other Gaza: http://www.atarimuseum.com/computers/computers.html

 

(Sorry for the history tangent everyone  )

Edited September 22, 2020 by Shaggy the Atarian

[zzip]

15 minutes ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

They also hired a replacement for Kassar, then didn't tell him what their ultimate intentions were to sell the company, so that guy just kept working like things were fine as he scaled back on some of the excess that Kassar had brought in, along with stuff like the 7800, elaborate arcade games like The Last Starfighter and a bunch of computers. All of this is laid out in extreme detail, along with the negotiations in the book Atari Inc. - Business Is Fun.

ok that's a different history that I heard, but I'll take your word for it.   A lot depends on which insiders stories you hear since everyone has a slightly different perspective of what was happening.

 

17 minutes ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

As for the 16-bit line under Warner, yes, two were in the early stages of development when the company was sold to the Tramiel family, one was code-named Sierra, the other

I know they had some in development, but that doesn't necessarily mean it would make it to market.  They were also working on 1400XL 1400XLD, the 1650XLD hybrid.   Supposedly the 8-bit computer line never made a profit for Warner.

[+x=usr(1536)]

3 hours ago, zzip said:

If they compare it to Sony/Microsoft consoles, it will come up short,  but Atari doesn't have the volume those companies do, so they can't get that kind of power for that price.   The bigger selling point here is the fact that it's open, and you can make it do what you want.

The thing is, even standing on its own, the VCS comes up short.  The hardware specs - which are getting older by the day - weren't particularly fresh to begin with, and the older it gets the more of a stretch it is to ask people to buy in at the price point they're targeting.  And the 'open system' thing has been beaten to death at this point: it's nothing that can't be done with a RasPi and a Retropie image for under $100.

 

Nobody cares about what goes into a $39.99 Plug & Play unit; they just want to play the howevermany games it includes, and that's fine.  But at $399, you need to be offering a lot more bang for the buck - especially in the face of rather a lot of adverse pre-release publicity.

 

The thread's going in circles, as all of these points were made in the Tacobox thread before it was closed.  At best, all anyone can really say at this time is that nothing's changed for Nutari.

[Shaggy the Atarian]

As mentioned, it's all in Atari Inc. - Business is Fun (even details on the different 16-bit machines). Unfortunately I don't have the book handy with me at work (and it's a huuuuge book), but if you get the chance, I'd highly recommend it. They really went to bat on talking with as many people involved in the events as they could. They also interview the Warner guy who went into Atari one morning to begin assessing it to put up for sale (I can't remember his name)

[JaqenHghar]

On 9/21/2020 at 11:43 AM, zzip said:

Product development is a messy process.  Requirements are in flux, corners are cut, deadlines are missed,  end result is often not what was originally specced.   But typically this all happened behind closed doors, and the consumer is none the wiser until the tell-all interviews/books/documentaries years later.

 

The crowdfunding process puts all that front-and-center.  People who've never worked on a product development cycle see things to get outraged about.   I've been through such cycles.  I'm not going to judge them on the process, I'm going to judge them on the end result, assuming it ships.   Anything else is meaningless internet drama.

It goes beyond product development uncertainties. Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't Atari claim they were about to ship in something like Dec 2018 but then cancel with a few weeks to go to "tweak" the product to "make it even better"? Since then I believe they've had two new hardware design teams and a whole new board. So what happened to this alleged Mk I from 2018? Did it even exist? If it just got "tweaked" to support a faster processor, what happened to the OS from the 2018 version that was about to ship? Weren't the processors compatible? The 2018 OS should've run on the 2020 prototype, just faster, right? So why did we barely see the OS until this year, with version numbers on the videos and screen itself strongly suggesting it was basically a 2020 newborn? Also, was it going to launch in 2018 without games? If not, why have we basically not seen those games in 2 years?

 

Design isn't a straight line but they had to have straight up lied in 2018. It seems hard to believe there was even a prototype, an OS, or games back then, let alone them being anywhere as close to the finish line as they claimed. There's no other reasonable explanation. Do you really believe they were at the finish line but basically threw the whole thing out and sunk two more years of funding into it to go back to square one, and risked all this wrath merely to tweak something that was never meant to compete with the Big 3 anyway? It was a bad precedent and I'd say a big reason so many remain so skeptical of them now. Plus if they are to be believed, we are basically now where we were then. So it creates a sense of deja vu and reawakens those doubts. Fool me once and all. Meanwhile it's like those who are giving them the benefit of the doubt now have no recollection of this 2018 deception. Or am I imagining this whole 2018 last-minute launch abort?

 

I mean I believe they've been trying to make an honest company out of themselves lately by actually buckling down. They've been showing some things since, but I can see how people might think they might resort to "old" (2018) habits if the going gets too tough for them.
 

 

[pacman000]

3 hours ago, zzip said:

Yes he could do those things,  but he was also good at burning bridges, didn't understand the gaming market and seemed to think that always "selling it as cheap as possible" was the way to win, because it worked our for him once.

 

More than once. He started in the 50's undercutting other typewriter repairmen. Then he moved on to manufacturing, under cutting other adding machine suppliers...until the Japanese undercut him. 

 

Problem is, there were too many ways to differentiate computers. But price still won; Packard Bell, Compaq, et al, undercut IBM's prices forcing them out of the market. 

[+Stephen]

1 hour ago, pacman000 said:

More than once. He started in the 50's undercutting other typewriter repairmen. Then he moved on to manufacturing, under cutting other adding machine suppliers...until the Japanese undercut him. 

 

Problem is, there were too many ways to differentiate computers. But price still won; Packard Bell, Compaq, et al, undercut IBM's prices forcing them out of the market. 

Sadly that practice continued and now we are flooded with cheap Chinese shit everywhere.  No American made TVs, radios, electronics, speakers, car or home amplifiers, etc.

[Chopsus]

1 hour ago, Stephen said:

Sadly that practice continued and now we are flooded with cheap Chinese shit everywhere.  No American made TVs, radios, electronics, speakers, car or home amplifiers, etc.

It would be hard, but Governments *could* stop this (and Donald promised to, but hasn’t) and I would suggest it is beyond time for us to keep putting our manufacturing “eggs” in the one oversized basket.

Edited September 22, 2020 by Chopsus

[TACODON]

This isn't the only comment section going in circles. The IGG comments are just the same circle. When you got nothing to talk about, all you can do is keep saying the same thing.

[+Stephen]

1 hour ago, TACODON said:

This isn't the only comment section going in circles. The IGG comments are just the same circle. When you got nothing to talk about, all you can do is keep saying the same thing.

I wonder if the not-VCS comes out, and people have no games to play on it, what will the conversation circle to?

[TACODON]

Hard to say but they figured out today is my birthday. They do good research. 

[joeatari1]

 

4 minutes ago, TACODON said:

Hard to say but they figured out today is my birthday. They do good research. 

Not that hard.  I found it in today's birthdays on the forums home page.  Happy birthday by the way.

[Matt_B]

 

9 hours ago, zzip said:

The whole point of crowdfunding is to raise money to bring your idea to life.

 

This product couldn't never exist in the traditional sense.   The media would look at it as a foolish attempt to compete with the big 3 and write it off completely.   Instead they went straight to the public with the concept and generated a lot of buzz.  Like it or not, this is how niche markets work in the 21st century. 

 

It's not like the old Atari started with working prototypes.   The ST barely worked and was extremely fragile when they showed it off at CES.   There was a lot of skepticism in the industry that the thing would ever make it to manufacturing.

Sure, crowdfunding is about raising money. However, there's still the expectation that it's a product that's going to be delivered and that the people behind it have the competence to do so.

 

I'm pretty sure that a device like the Spectrum Next couldn't exist in the traditional sense either - it was not so much aiming for a niche, but a crack in the wall with only around 3000 backers on Kickstarter - but that didn't stop them from building a working prototype before they went to crowdfunding. If you're working with off-the-shelf chips it should only cost a few thousand dollars too so you could go through several iterations of this before settling upon a design that's right for the job, at least if you know what you're doing. Atari obviously didn't know what they're doing and they're also cheapskates into the bargain.

 

Surely I don't need to point out he difference between the barely working prototype of the ST and a lump of plastic? The former nowadays might just have been good enough to satisfy Kickstarter's requirements but the latter was never going to. Atari went with Indiegogo precisely because they're the Wild West of crowdfunding and allow you to take money for pretty much anything at the glint-in-the-eye stage.

 

28 minutes ago, Stephen said:

I wonder if the not-VCS comes out, and people have no games to play on it, what will the conversation circle to?

Um... what's the best game on AntStream? ???