Monday, December 19th 2022
Atari Calls it Quits on the Atari VCS
What can only be summed up as one of the biggest failures when it comes to gaming consoles, the Atari VCS, is coming to an end, as Atari has decided to pull the plug. The company is said to have cancelled all of its "existing VCS manufacturing contracts", which means that after its current stock is sold out, it's unlikely that the company will make any more VCS consoles. The company is offering its current stock at a 20 percent discount, to anyone that would be interested in throwing away their money.
Atari's revenue from sales of the VCS and its accessories dropped from €2.3 million last year, to an abysmal €0.2 million this year, or a drop in revenue of 92 percent based on Atari's latest earnings report. This suggests that the company went from selling around a million units to selling around 10,000 units, based on the retail pricing of the VCS. Atari is apparently planning on launching new games based on its intellectual property, as well as getting into NFTs in the future, in addition to potentially licensing its brand to third parties for new hardware products. It would appear that history is repeating itself when it comes to Atari's success and not in a good way, as the company had a net loss of €5.4 million this year.
Sources:
Atari, via liliputing
Atari's revenue from sales of the VCS and its accessories dropped from €2.3 million last year, to an abysmal €0.2 million this year, or a drop in revenue of 92 percent based on Atari's latest earnings report. This suggests that the company went from selling around a million units to selling around 10,000 units, based on the retail pricing of the VCS. Atari is apparently planning on launching new games based on its intellectual property, as well as getting into NFTs in the future, in addition to potentially licensing its brand to third parties for new hardware products. It would appear that history is repeating itself when it comes to Atari's success and not in a good way, as the company had a net loss of €5.4 million this year.
54 Comments on Atari Calls it Quits on the Atari VCS
I wish for more competition in the market. I would love to see Atari, Sega, and others attempt to rejoin the console market. But if they are to do it, they need to bring something different to the table or just be overall competitive. This was just an expensive retro console.
They pissed off their backers (since it was crowd funded) and it's hard to gain much goodwill after you do that.
There were also lots of hardware development issues and the final product didn't quite deliver from what I've read.
Not surprised it ended up being a fairly shortlived product.
Yeah, the Atari brand name has been dragged through the mud since the 90's and now this. So even if they really wanted to return to the game market in near future, most won't trust them who remember what Atari is, and those who don't know who Atari is, may not be as keen either.
they all look alike, and are practically identical, with only very minor differences... don't believe me, just line up the last 50 or so ATX/mATX cases released by any/all case mfgr's in the past 3-5 years, side by side at 20 feet away with their name badges removed, and I dare you to accurately tell me which one is which... this would of course ignore the one offs like iWin, TT, and a very few others who have dared to buck the ongoing trend of same-ole-same-same-boring-AF-no-design-effort-whatsoever
what we really need is a console that is actually different, new & fresh, not just in name/specs/ect but in DESIGN, features and at moar REASONABLE price points....WITH a completely agnostic platform/hdwr that will play games from any service or developer...and WITHOUT the gawd-awful streamin SAAS crap-apps that were supposed to be "da bomb" like 5-7 years ago but have never materialized to this day :(
Yea, I know I'm dreamin, but then again, I don't do gamz, so I really could care less one way or the other, but just sayin :D
I was a tad peeved when my dad said no to the Turbo Gphx 16 but now I understand after seeing those prices.
Apple can take a long walk off a short pier.
Atari? Well, they were as bad as MS is now with shovelware and helped lead the gaming crash initially (colleco helped big time too).
I was more sad to see Hudson soft and NEC not do anything again or new. I don't even know if Hudson soft even exists anymore.
The console has a very nice look to it, I wouldn't mind having something like that as a streaming box/htpc but it's too expensive and outdated for even that, not to mention slow (it's a freaking dual core in 2021)
- Ridiculously late
- Ridiculously priced
- Multiple lawsuits against Atari for the shambolic and troubled release, including one from the hardware designer who wasn't paid!!
- Not authentic hardware, just emulating like a $10 Raspberry Pi
- The 2600 is heavily blamed for the shovelware epidemic that caused the videogame crash of 1983
I am surprised this Atari internal vanity project made it this far, really.Goodbye and good riddance; Nothing of value was lost, since nothing of value was created in the first place.
It's especially apparent in the phone space. Few even try with unique game consoles and computers anymore. It's sad too, because I long for more variety, but if it could be done right, the Big Boys would already be doing it.
www.techpowerup.com/cpu-specs/ryzen-embedded-r1606g.c2844
I have two laptops older than that running Windows 11 perfectly. The specs for the VCS, while not stellar, were good.
Where Atari went wrong was how they managed the development, manufacture and distribution of the system and it's software offerings. They also had to compete with with ALOT of other similar systems with more to offer for only a little more money and could run all of people's existing games.
What Atari needed to do was partner with Steam, Epic and GOG to make their system a platform anyone and everyone could jump right into.
As if not paying the designer of this new VCS console was bad enough (Atari defaulted in court), I dare you to read about what happened to Feargal Mac - they guy who originally posed the idea of a retro-remake to Atari and got their permission to launch the IndieGoGo campaign that raised $3M for the project.
I would most certainly want to own a VCS over most compact PCs, but I guess I'm destined to buy a Mac mini someday.