Rob Wyatt, the architect behind the original Xbox and someone Atari hired to work on the Atari VCS system is now suing Atari over their failure to actually pay up.
This is something we mentioned last year, when it was announced that Wyatt left Atari on poor terms, mentioning how they hadn't actually been paid for over six months and they were left with no choice but to leave the project. Since then, we've not heard much. Atari continued putting out their development blog posts, showing off pictures of units in production in China and delaying the release. Spotted by VentureBeat and confirmed here, Tin Giant (Rob Wyatt's company), are now suing Atari over a "Breach of Contract". According to the suit, Atari owes something around $261,720 which is no small sum.
All this is going on while Atari also mentioned in a recent update about COVID-19 and the VCS production, stating they had enough to build only 500 units by the end of March and those would be developer kits and none of them going to backers. They said they planned to "ship to all backers at the same time when enough VCS units and peripherals are available". Their wording is interesting, as they don't directly say it's been delayed but it quite clearly has been, again.
Real shame to see Atari constantly screwing up on this one. A Linux-powered, small form factor and quite stylish unit could have been great.
Not sure what I expect at this point, this is from the company who emails people on the Atari VCS list about their upcoming "Atari Casino" where you play with cryptocurrency including their "upcoming Atari Token"—oh dear. That feels pretty gross. There's a lot of trust issues going on, repeated delays and now a lawsuit over not paying someone they made a big splash about joining them.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
slaapliedje Apr 3, 2020
Whatever else you say about these guys, their project has provided a lot of entertainment. It may never yield a game box, but it's already given us an excellent soap opera.The Atacobox thread over at AtariAge is quite possibly one of the most epic forum threads ever.
So at least they have given us that! A lot of their demo videos are belived to be running Windows, that would irritate me since they made such a big deal about it being Linux based.
LMFAO
slaapliedje Apr 3, 2020
At this point people should be happy if they get a Raspberry pi with emulation station tuned for atari 2600.Ha, why would they be happy with that? I could build basically a 2600 out of an Arduino or something for less than the 200-300 bucks they were asking for these things.
LMFAO
There were many saying that is all this ever was anyhow. I actually think at least a small few of the people working on it sound like they are very much Atari fans and want this to happen. But then I also had heard that Robert Wyatt didn't actually do much while there, and most of the time he was supposed to have been working for them, he had broken something from a skydiving accident. So there is that. So much good nerd drama!
slaapliedje Apr 4, 2020
After stuff like the Coleco Chameleon and Atari Gameband i'm suprised people still fall for these dubious nostalgia-bait crowdfunding projects. I don't get why people even wanted this thing in the first place, when you take away the fancy controller and case it's nothing more than an decently-specced Linux box with a bunch of pre-installed Atari-branded crap.Decent specs, good form factor, Linux. Pretty much says it all. Nostalgia isn't really a thing about this, because anyone who knows anything about Atari knows this really isn't them in anything but name and what's left of their IP that they haven't sold off.
After stuff like the Coleco Chameleon and Atari Gameband i'm suprised people still fall for these dubious nostalgia-bait crowdfunding projects. I don't get why people even wanted this thing in the first place, when you take away the fancy controller and case it's nothing more than an decently-specced Linux box with a bunch of pre-installed Atari-branded crap.
nostalgic fans are blind, and after the oton console, we can be sure that linux fans are blind too:
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/oton-x-claims-to-be-the-first-artificial-intelligent-games-console-its-powered-by-linux.7996
it was an obvious scan, and some people still believed it could be true, we should focus our money in projects that alredy proved they can deliver something instead of this bullshit, why fund an obvious scan like this when we could have funded projects like gimp, godot and blender?
slaapliedje Apr 4, 2020
The Final Fall of Atari is around the corner? Perhaps.Anyone remember when Commodore USA came about and was trying to make C64 and Amiga like cases? That pretty much ended after the guy died.
It will probably take something like that, but I guess the big difference is that Atari actually made a lot of games in the past that were fantastic. The problem is, most of them were arcade games, and really they needed something more complex then and now to have stayed relevant to software.
I have always liked their hardware designs, but my favorites were the 2600, 8bit line and then the Amiga. All created by the same lead engineer, Jay Miner. Too bad he isn't still around to make something cool.
I wish Atari luck myself, if they can eventually pull something out, cool. If not? Meh.
The Final Fall of Atari is around the corner? Perhaps.Anyone remember when Commodore USA came about and was trying to make C64 and Amiga like cases? That pretty much ended after the guy died.
It will probably take something like that, but I guess the big difference is that Atari actually made a lot of games in the past that were fantastic. The problem is, most of them were arcade games, and really they needed something more complex then and now to have stayed relevant to software.
I have always liked their hardware designs, but my favorites were the 2600, 8bit line and then the Amiga. All created by the same lead engineer, Jay Miner. Too bad he isn't still around to make something cool.
I wish Atari luck myself, if they can eventually pull something out, cool. If not? Meh.
Yeah! i would love to see Atari strive..We need something more than the three main console providers. I did have an Atari 2600 for a while, it wasn't my fav. Although i do like Atari. I always wish i could of owned one of their old computer systems. This project sounds great though, and i do hope it can come into light. We need more consoles that allow more freedom to the user.
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