Flashback and Atari 10 in one

[carmel_andrews]

Who would have thought that putting out a Pong type gaming system (from a design/technological viewpoint) would be considered a good business move

 

And yet we have Infogrammes/Jakks bastardizing Atari's technology (so far as the 2600/7800 are concerned) and reproducing it in a pong type machine which essentially play 10-20 different flavours of pong

 

How would infogrammes like it if we took one of their leading best selling software titles and began porting it over to the spectrum or ZX81 and selling the software under the infogrammes name

 

If Steve mayer and Joe Decuir (the main 2600 h/w designers) were dead today, they'd be turining in their graves

 

I was lead to believe that the idea behind the 2600 (and laterly the 7800) was to advance the games systems technology beyond 'dedicated gaming systems' (AkA PONG machines) by producing 'programmable games sytems'

 

And yet it would apear (according to infogrammes/Jakks) that the 2600/7800 might as well have never existed (so far as technology is concerned)

 

Is it no surprise then that 'gamespot's website recent reported that infogrammes (Atari) are loosing money (Again), not surprising when they want to screw their customer base by releasing/selling them 'substandard' or '2nd rate' products like the infogrammes/jakks devices

 

And further more, insulting Atari users (computers and gaming systems) by demeaning and denigrating the very technology Atari were founded on

 

People and consumers might have wanted 'Pong' type products 30 years ago, they certainly don't want them now

 

If infogrammes/Jakks were serious about releasing these types of devices, a better solution would have been to have added a cartridge port (hence keeping in with the design/technology capabilites of the aforementioned emulated systems)

 

Alternately bringing out an official Atari endorsed version of one of the more popular, cross platform emulators, and supplied the disk with a small selection of between 4-500 legal roms, and providing an internet link so that users of this product could acquire additional roms (for a small charge) or updated versions of the aforementioned emulators, at least this solution wouldn't have been as substandard or 2nd rate a product then the SHIT they released

 

But there again i guess that Jakks/infogrammes are more interested in screwing their customer base and don't believe in retaining their existing customer base

 

But there again, what DO i know about the videogame business

[shep]

With all do respect, they did buy the rights to the Atari name, its not like they just started labeling the crap without having to get any kind of permission. They own it. They can do whatever they want with it.

[Flojomojo]

I'm no big free-market believer, but in this case, I think it will shake itself out. Crap won't sell, quality will. Flashback 2.0 will be better, or it's going to fester on the shelf, unsold.