It seems the Atari VCS is not dead and will actually be seeing a launch this year, as Atari themselves have now confirmed.
After a successful crowdfunding campaign on IndieGoGo that raised over three million dollars they've seen repeated delays, a lawsuit or two and plenty of ridicule from other publications. Still, they kept at it, giving out updates on their Medium blog about the ongoing production and optimization process.
Back in April they claimed mass production had started, although when you saw the actual post details it was only 500 units total. Not exactly mass production but okay, whatever. Last month in June they mentioned they had 96 actually be delivered to them, although 500 were in fact produced with "more than 10,000 VCS units this summer" to be ready.
The latest update posted today on their IndieGoGo page states that the recently released Missile Command: Recharged will also be a day-1 title for the Atari VCS. As far as I can tell, apart from the Atari Vault, that's the only game to be fully confirmed apart from the Antstream Arcade retro streaming service although we do expect more to be announced.
What's interesting there though, is they said "on the upcoming Atari VCS™ in fall 2020", so going by that you would think it's launching in Fall 2020. Actually though, as confirmed in a Twitter post today their plan is for IndieGoGo backers to get their unit in October with pre-orders "this holiday season".
The Atari-VCS launches with their Linux-based operating system which is now confirmed to be called "Atari World", and the ability to run any other operating system on it so if you wanted you could load up Ubuntu on it.
Coming in multiple different editions, some of which are exclusive to stores in America. It can be picked up as a bundle for about $400 with the Atari VCS 800 system, Atari Classic Joystick, Atari Modern Controller, Power Supply and HDMI cable or $300 for just the VCS 800.
See more on the official site.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
slaapliedje Jul 1, 2020
Ironically, it probably would be more successful if it followed what everyone was poking fun at it for, being a Raspberry Pi in a case... Then they could have just sold it as a packaged / pre-built RetroPie or something. Granted, if ANYONE does that, they better give back to the coders of that, as I'm pretty sure their license is 'you can't sell this'. But at least if they'd done that, it would have been out and people could have been playing with it AND it'd still be cheap enough for the random buy people. As it is, this kind of seems like the Jaguar all over again, where they don't seem to have any developers onboard for creating games for it, comes out with not enough time to stand up to the competition, and just gets slaughtered by Sony....
slaapliedje Jul 1, 2020
i'm still wondering who is the target audience for that...I for one think their needs to be a third competitor!
Not that I'm saying Atari is in any position to be that, but you basically have Microsoft and Sony. Nintendo is still around, but the Switch is a middle range.. is it portable, is it not? system, so kind of weird, and low powered at that.
What would have been cool is if Sega and Atari had teamed up together to build a system (and it came out at the appropriate time / place / specs) AND wasn't trying to be a computer and was only really a game system. That's where I think Nintendo got it right, it's not a multimedia system like the Xbox / PS#.
I'm sure some of us would appreciate just a dedicated gaming console for once. Can't tell you how many times I've booted up my PS4 to play a game with my brother, and then we had to wait for the OS to update... then the game to update... It actually makes me not want to play that often.
i'm still wondering who is the target audience for that...I for one think their needs to be a third competitor!
Not that I'm saying Atari is in any position to be that, but you basically have Microsoft and Sony. Nintendo is still around, but the Switch is a middle range.. is it portable, is it not? system, so kind of weird, and low powered at that.
What would have been cool is if Sega and Atari had teamed up together to build a system (and it came out at the appropriate time / place / specs) AND wasn't trying to be a computer and was only really a game system. That's where I think Nintendo got it right, it's not a multimedia system like the Xbox / PS#.
I'm sure some of us would appreciate just a dedicated gaming console for once. Can't tell you how many times I've booted up my PS4 to play a game with my brother, and then we had to wait for the OS to update... then the game to update... It actually makes me not want to play that often.
the issue is, this thing cost as much as an Ps4 or xbox one base (i dont know about the ps4 pro and xbox one x price)
it has no games from thirdy parties (at least not the big studios), and even if it had, the graphics would be inferior because the hardware is inferior.
(not to mention that sony will launch ps5 and microsoft will launch xbox series)
if it dont attract developers it wont attract end users, if it dont atract end users it wont attract developers, and i dont see they solving any of those issues to break the cycle.
its a device for atari nostalgic people and linux fanboys and that is it.
it wont improve our ecosystem, nor give the atari brand the recognition it deserves, we should have spent the money on godot or something.
slaapliedje Jul 1, 2020
So really price/spec wise, it basically matches the PS4 (it's about 60 cheaper, but also doesn't come with any physical media, from my understanding, and is a tad slower).
But I still think if it had released the same time they announced it, instead of making a bunch of people bitter, it may have gotten a decent following.
As it sits now it's a lot of Taco jokes, and not a lot of gaming going on. You're better off buying Rebooteroids and a Jaguar :) (though to be fair, for the price of that, you can buy a PS4).
slaapliedje Jul 3, 2020
It's quite a lot to take in.
slaapliedje Jul 11, 2020
If you're interested in some fact based opinion pieces on YouTube, YongYea has released 2 videos in the last few days summarizing the shady history behind the VCS and Atari's questionable business practices.I have been thinking lately, somewhat related to this, about how much the world has changed with the internet.
It's quite a lot to take in.
We have a frightening amount of people gathering together bwcause they think the earth is flat and gravity isn't a thing... but really the people like that have always been around, the Internet just gives them a place to spread their idiocy.
Companies doing shady shit has always been the thing they do. They play on that boarderline between shady and unethical, to almost illegal. It is just now we have the internet to interact more "live" with what is going on!
Current Atari is rather "new" at this game, and so they just suck at it more than the big corps who do shady shit all the time!
Patreon
PayPal
See more from me