News Atari VCS in Jeopardy After Atari Pull Manufacturing Contracts

[Admin]

Atari has ended its manufacturing contracts for the VCS console as its shifts its hardware strategy.

Atari VCS in Jeopardy After Atari Pull Manufacturing Contracts : Read more

 

[PiranhaTech]

I like the idea, but it's too expensive. Its competition is the $400 laptop, and I saw one with a Core-i3 11000 series with 8 GB of RAM, and Core i3s are very capable CPUs

It's got a good look. It looks nice especially compared to a small desktop PC. If it were only cheaper

Atari should sell the look to have a VCS-shaped router. Also, the VCS is about as bad of a name as the Xbox Series S|X.

 

[Derpeee]

I’d be interested to hear directly from Wade Rosen (CEO) on this for confirmation or from any other rep. Time to check the discord.

EDIT
Yep as I checked they are just trying to find new partners. They are not ending production of the VCS.

 

[oknazevad]

I’d be interested to hear directly from Wade Rosen (CEO) on this for confirmation or from any other rep. Time to check the discord.

EDIT
Yep as I checked they are just trying to find new partners. They are not ending production of the VCS.

Makes me wonder if they think they can get it buoy cheaper so they can cut the price, because at $400 it's too expensive for what it is, but for $250 they might get some bites as a bargain system.

 

[LordVile]

Don’t really get the appeal on the VCS aside from the look tbh.

 

[Deleted member 14196]

I’m not interested in going backwards in time. Nostalgia sucks. I wouldn’t even pay 50 bucks for that whole set of JUNK

 

[g-unit1111]

It's a nice idea but $399 is insanity. At this point Atari should probably cut its' losses and put its' games on Switch or PS5.

 

[Bazzy 505]

Product without a customer by company that has nothing to do Atari, other than name. Keep in mind the company we're talking here is Inforgrames ( with no historical link to Atari) , that went through a very convoluted of series of rebrands and bouts with chapter 11 from 2005 onwards ; calling itself Atari now.

That brand followed similarly sad faith as Commodore brand, which at one point sank as low as being owned by a former truck driver who knew very little about computing in general.
Curse of these two former heated rivals seems to very alive to this day

back to the "new" VCS , there's no market for it rly, it's as expensive as estabilished consoles, and weak as budget laptop and has no software to support it other than what we've already purchased million times before on just about any platform on those "atari classics bundles" .

literally another ouya with fancier name attached to it

 

[AlbertAZ]

I still have my fully loaded (lol) Atari 800, cassette drive, 2 Indus GT drives, the connection box, plotter, Panasonic printer, controllers and lots of cartridges (roms)

 

[Deleted member 14196]

Exactly anyone who even cares already has the old hardware and they still dont play it. Because it basically sucks and nobody wants to go backwards in time. the old days of video gaming sucked.

The same reason nobody wants an old Nokia phone anymore. Hell not even the new ones. Nostalgia needs to die forever, and never be remembered except that it sucked to be old like that.

 

[PiranhaTech]

Makes me wonder if they think they can get it buoy cheaper so they can cut the price, because at $400 it's too expensive for what it is, but for $250 they might get some bites as a bargain system.

This is what I'm thinking. If it were cheap enough, it might be nice for a utility system. It's something that would look nice out in the open

 

[Co BIY]

Surprised Microsoft hasn't picked up Atari out of the petty cash fund ...

or as a Bill Gates charity project.

 

[kyzarvs]

Exactly anyone who even cares already has the old hardware and they still dont play it. Because it basically sucks and nobody wants to go backwards in time. the old days of video gaming sucked.

The same reason nobody wants an old Nokia phone anymore. Hell not even the new ones. Nostalgia needs to die forever, and never be remembered except that it sucked to be old like that.

Retropi and the hundreds of other retro gaming systems would disagree. And the shiny graphics of a new generation vs actual gameply debate has gone on for at least 40 years.

"If you've no idea where you've come from, you've no idea where you are going"

 

[TerryLaze]

I’m not interested in going backwards in time. Nostalgia sucks. I wouldn’t even pay 50 bucks for that whole set of JUNK

It's still a decent PC that you can run windows linux or steamos on, it is expensive for what it is but it still is a decent system.
Also old games are great, there is a reason why we have game series go on until today that are 40+ years old.

Exactly anyone who even cares already has the old hardware and they still dont play it. Because it basically sucks and nobody wants to go backwards in time. the old days of video gaming sucked.

That very much depends on a per case basis.
You can mix old hardware with new components to keep all the good things of the original but also have all the good things of modern tech.
Like using an old DOS PC but with an ide to sd connector so you don't have to deal with old ide drives and floppies to get games onto your system but you just copy them over from your new system.
Or having an optical drive emulator for your cd/dvd based consoles so you can run your whole library from an sd card.
Or an cart to sd for your cartridge based consoles.

Yeah trying to run a game from a 40 year old floppy on a 40 year old system sucks big time which is why nobody does it, we have gotek drives for that.

 

[Bazzy 505]

Gates has not been involved in day to day running of Microsoft since 2014 and as of 2020 is no longer even a board member.
So unless Bill Spencer has a total blackout, that's not happening. Sad as it is there's no ymuch value left in Atari's IP portfolio,
be it hardware or software. It's cultural relevance died in mid 80's and technical revelance about decade prior.
Probably its most valued rights they have had in times of the rebrand was DnD license, and they don't even hold that anymore.

As for Atari's most iconing original properties, they're mostly very simple games that are recreated as teaching tool in 101 programming courses these days

 

[bit_user]

IMO, the VCS should've been a high-end (relatively speaking) Android-based gaming & streaming device. Their software catalog should be available to play on any Android or iOS device. That way, they could've made money on the VCS hardware and Atari software catalog, independently. Maybe the hardware could include a discount code or something, so that the software catalog (or some portion thereof) is included for free.

Oh, and the hardware took ridiculously long to come to market. They should've outsourced it, except for the case & controller design.