New Atari console?

[Bill Loguidice]

On 11/28/2020 at 2:20 PM, AlecRob said:

I guess I’m just wrong and stupid for supporting this thing.  I’ll go back to facebook and talk with all the other wrong, stupid people.

It doesn't have to be like that. While I agree that some people take the ribbing way too far on here, as long as we're all working from the same expectations here, I don't see much of a rift. The VCS is probably going to sell under 20,000 units lifetime, which is a bad MONTH in the lifetime of a mainstream console (and should be the ultimate nail in any actual comparisons), but will certainly make it an endearing underdog among the few faithful owners. No hate here when I say that having such a close-knit community who really believe in the product is no bad thing. I'm sure until the enthusiasm inevitably wanes, we WILL see some fun things from that type of community for the VCS.

[+x=usr(1536)]

11 hours ago, justclaws said:

I don't understand why so many people are dead-set against the new Atari VCS, or have such a passion in hating the
project, but then again, I love my Atari Jaguar, and everybody hated that too, partly because it wasnt't from real-Atari,
being a Tramiel creation.

 

Here's the difference: while Atari under Tramiel was a different company to the ones that had come before it, it carried on doing something that Atari had always done - namely, making hardware and software.  This was done in-house, though I'll concede that much of manufacturing was farmed out to other companies.

 

Atari SA exists solely to hold and license IP rights.  That's it.  All of their talk about the new VCS, hotels, cryptocurrencies, online casinos, speakerhats, stock market listings, and everything else is being done in an attempt to fatten up the company in the eyes of potential purchasers.  There is no spirit of Atari in this company, just C-level executives looking to sell to someone gullible enough to buy.

 

11 hours ago, justclaws said:

Well, also, most of our range was not "real Atari", after Nolan Bushnell sold up. I like his quote that he'd probably not have sold it if he hadn't just been so tired. For me, the Infogrames-Atari team deserve a chance.

 

Atari SA has nothing to do with Infogrames, which ceased to exist in 2009.  Since then, the company's been through bankruptcy and acquired by the current set of clowns running it.  It literally has nothing to do with any iteration of Atari prior to about 2003 or so.  It's not Atari.

[AlecRob]

Isnt VCS atari SA’s attempt to revive its hardware producing tradition?

[+CyranoJ]

Just now, AlecRob said:

Isnt VCS atari SA’s attempt to revive its hardware producing tradition?

Can't tell if trolling or not anymore.  

[AlecRob]

2 minutes ago, CyranoJ said:

Can't tell if trolling or not anymore.  

With all their announcements and projects they are clearly trying to distinguish themselves as a different type of company than atari SA once was.   Perhaps the current owners and employees of Atari SA have bigger business aspirations than just merely IP owners.    

[+CyranoJ]

Just now, AlecRob said:

With all their announcements and projects they are clearly trying to distinguish themselves as a different type of company than atari SA once was.   Perhaps the current owners and employees of Atari SA have bigger business aspirations than just merely IP owners.    

Can't tell if trolling or not anymore. 

[AlecRob]

1 minute ago, CyranoJ said:

Can't tell if trolling or not anymore. 

I never said they were the smartest business owners in the world, I just said maybe they have bigger aspirations than just IP holders.  Clearly they have made mistakes along the way.  Their biggest mistake is revealing too much about the development process and publicity/social media tomfoolery.  They should have kept their mouths SHUT and just made people wait and speculate then BAM it’s shown nearly complete and working and released soon after.

 

but no, atari had to show everyone their asscrack, and now people are enraged and disenfranchised.  

[+x=usr(1536)]

2 hours ago, AlecRob said:

I never said they were the smartest business owners in the world, I just said maybe they have bigger aspirations than just IP holders.  Clearly they have made mistakes along the way.  Their biggest mistake is revealing too much about the development process and publicity/social media tomfoolery.  They should have kept their mouths SHUT and just made people wait and speculate then BAM it’s shown nearly complete and working and released soon after.

 

It still would have taken them three-plus years to get to the same point they're at now, and it's not as though doing any of the above would have made a difference to that timeline.  Sony, Microsoft, or Nintendo taking three years to ready a console for launch is understandable; a pile of twits unable to put together what's effectively an x64-based Linux box is not.

 

Quote

but no, atari had to show everyone their asscrack, and now people are enraged and disenfranchised.  

 

Oh, please.  Don't be so melodramatic about it.  Nobody's 'enraged', as you chose to put it.  But it is a complete shitshow from start to...  Well, we're still waiting for the end - and if people actually receive the units they backed, that's not going to be the end.  That's going to be the start of seeing if they can sustain the thing (i.e., live up to their promises of things to come in ownership) once it's in the marketplace.

 

BTW: you may want to check the definition of the word 'disenfranchisement'.  I do not think it means what you think it means.

Edited November 30, 2020 by x=usr(1536)

[justclaws]

6 hours ago, x=usr(1536) said:

Here's the difference: while Atari under Tramiel was a different company to the ones that had come before it, it carried on doing something that Atari had always done - namely, making hardware and software.  This was done in-house, though I'll concede that much of manufacturing was farmed out to other companies.

 

Atari SA exists solely to hold and license IP rights.  That's it.  All of their talk about the new VCS, hotels, cryptocurrencies, online casinos, speakerhats, stock market listings, and everything else is being done in an attempt to fatten up the company in the eyes of potential purchasers.  There is no spirit of Atari in this company, just C-level executives looking to sell to someone gullible enough to buy.

You might be right, but I see it differently.
I think you might be surprised if you look at the senior management of Atari, detailed on their own web-site.
The current CEO is the former CEO of Atari Interactive between 2003-2007,  and was Infogrames before that.
Looking further, several others have big historical Atari Interactive, Atari Games, and/or Infogrames connections.
As to the design of products, I think the development blog details for the hardware, joysticks etc., is fascinating.

Atari has a long history of having interests in weird off-shoots, with Nolan Bushnell certainly started that off. ?
I do imagine what people would say if he returned as a director! "An old start-up guy who only knows pizzas!"

I think the PR mis-steps are absolutely in the tradition of Atari Jaguar era Atari. The Atari Panther project then
morphing into the Atari Jaguar project, the mistakes over 64-bit as the marketing line, the announced projects
of Atari VR, and the widespread bad press. So few initial games at launch, so few big-name 3rd-party developers
and the choice of Jaguar as entertainment and media platform. The move to port games to PCs. I'm really quite
wondering if we'll discover in 20 years that the VCS project was code-named Tiger or Leopard at the beginning...
I guess, to me, the problems with the Atari Box/VCS make it a spiritual successor (in that way) to the Jaguar. ?️‍♂️

I admit, I've often picked to use the underdog projects, and most of the time, they didn't succeed, but maybe... 
Rebel Alliance vs. The Empire, Supervision vs. Gameboy, Atari Jaguar vs. Playstation, Atari Lynx vs. Game Gear,
OS/2 Warp vs. Windows NT, Nuon vs. ???, Wii vs. PS2/Xbox, Nintendo Wii-U vs. PS3/Xbox, Linux vs. Windows...

I'm just going to wait and see what happens, and if I can get hold of an Atari VCS, I'll certainly give it a shot.
Maybe I'm gullible, but I'm open-minded and I'm happy to take the risk. Sometimes there's more joy in that!

[racerx]

3 hours ago, AlecRob said:

Their biggest mistake is revealing too much about the development process and publicity/social media tomfoolery.  They should have kept their mouths SHUT and just made people wait and speculate then BAM it’s shown nearly complete and working and released soon after.

 

Except Indigogo requires monthly updates to backers, and "Atari" struggled to meet even that basic requirement, with "updates" like "look at these other potential faceplates."

 

Their social media went dark for an eleven month stretch, likely when they were switching from the incompetent RainFactory to the equally incompetent UberStrategist to manage their affairs.

 

No. Information like failing to pay contractors leaking out or setting and repeatedly missing release dates is not the same as "revealing too much."

Edited November 30, 2020 by racerx

[+Sauron]

36 minutes ago, racerx said:

No. Information like failing to pay contractors leaking out or setting and repeatedly missing release dates is not the same as "revealing too much."

Yeah, it's quite apparent that they were in over their heads with releasing a hardware product.

 

I haven't really piped up much about the VCS, and with good reason. I haven't been able to make up my mind on what to think about it. I'm kinda in both camps, actually. I don't trust the bozos in charge of parading around the dead corpse of Atari and pretending that they know what they're doing. The sum total of what they've done with the Atari name equals dragging it through the mud and watching pieces of its rotting flesh flake off, making it look even more hideous than it already did.

 

On the other hand, there's still a part of me that has been longing to see some kind of new hardware with the Atari name on it, and the VCS is the closest that we've gotten to that in the last 25 years (and no, the Flashback products don't count). I'd love to get my hands on one once its released, even though the hardware it has costs 3 times more than what I payed for my current PC but with about half the performance. So what, though? It doesn't matter. What will make or break its usefulness to people is the software that runs on the hardware, and I still have little idea of what to expect from that. In all, I don't see the VCS as anything more than an overpriced toy meant to try to give some kind of value to the Atari IP, but even knowing that there's still a part of me that hopes that it can eventually help lead to a resurgence of Atari as something more than a rotting corpse. And I think that in essence is what the few people who are cheering on this product are hoping for as well.

 

[+x=usr(1536)]

4 hours ago, justclaws said:

You might be right, but I see it differently.
I think you might be surprised if you look at the senior management of Atari, detailed on their own web-site.
The current CEO is the former CEO of Atari Interactive between 2003-2007,  and was Infogrames before that.
Looking further, several others have big historical Atari Interactive, Atari Games, and/or Infogrames connections.

 

Agreed, at least as far as written.  However, this iteration of Atari isn't Infogrames, either.

 

John Sculley became CEO of Apple after 15 years at Pepsi.  That doesn't make today's Apple a consumer electronics company with a sideline in soft drinks in its past ?

 

Quote

Atari has a long history of having interests in weird off-shoots, with Nolan Bushnell certainly started that off. ?
I do imagine what people would say if he returned as a director! "An old start-up guy who only knows pizzas!"

 

This may sound cynical on my behalf, but even if Bushnell were to return to the company today, I'd have difficulty seeing it as being anything other than a PR exercise.  He's not the same guy he was nearly 50 years ago, with interests that are much different to what they were then - and that's OK.  I'd hate to think of him being trotted out in a, "hey, look, your wacky Atari pal Nolan Bushnell is back!" moment by Atari SA.  Then again, he really has been staying away from the current company - at least publically - so that in and of itself may speak volumes.

 

Edited November 30, 2020 by x=usr(1536)

[+Sauron]

3 hours ago, x=usr(1536) said:

This may sound cynical on my behalf, but even if Bushnell were to return to the company today, I'd have difficulty seeing it as being anything other than a PR exercise.  He's not the same guy he was nearly 50 years ago, with interests that are much different to what they were then - and that's OK.  I'd hate to think of him being trotted out in a, "hey, look, your wacky Atari pal Nolan Bushnell is back!" moment by Atari SA.  Then again, he really has been staying away from the current company - at least publically - so that in and of itself may speak volumes.

 

They already tried that about 10 years ago when they added him to the board of directors. Not sure how long he actually stayed on it, though.

 

 

[Schnaasfan]

On 11/30/2020 at 9:21 PM, Sauron said:

They already tried that about 10 years ago when they added him to the board of directors. Not sure how long he actually stayed on it, though.

 

 

So he is not there anymore?

[joeatari1]

On 12/2/2020 at 8:27 AM, III said:

So he is not there anymore?

No, he is not.