Atari Calls it Quits on the Atari VCS

[Dr. Dro]

Such a shame. IMO they just didn't market it correctly or worked on international availability.

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.

 

[Neo_Morpheus]

Sounds awfully like what happened during Panther and Jaguar days. Heck, I didn't even know a single other guy who had one of those and back then remember hearing how crap it was.

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.

Sorry, but many of your points are simply wrong.

Panther was canceled because the Jaguar project was moving faster and better than expected.

Jaguar was way superior to the consoles that it was competing with (Genesis and SNES) but thanks to delays from IBM (whom was the manufacturer elected), it came out late and ended competing with the PS1, Saturn, N64 and 3DO. Funny enough, Aliens vs Predator had superior 3d video quality than many if not all PS1 games due to having proper z buffering capabilities

Atari didnt release proper documentation to devs and also, lazy devs abused the platform flexibility by releasing games using only the Motorola 6800 cpu instead of the custom chips (Tom and Jerry).

Sadly, Atari corp from the 90s had a string of unlucky events that simply were too much and the current atari only shares the name.

In conclusion, no, the Jaguar wasnt a bad system as you describe it.

Such a shame. IMO they just didn't market it correctly or worked on international availability.

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.

I honestly wasnt aware that they were selling or making games, because i havent seen not even one ad or article or nothing to make me even aware that it was alive.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

Sorry, but many of your points are simply wrong.

pot calling the kettle black

Panther was canceled because the Jaguar project was moving faster and better than expected.

Jaguar was way superior to the consoles that it was competing with (Genesis and SNES) but thanks to delays from IBM (whom was the manufacturer elected), it came out late and ended competing with the PS1, Saturn, N64 and 3DO.

"superior" only if you count the combined power of its multiple processors, not taking into account the difficulty of coding for such hardware. The same mistake sega would make with the saturn, and sony with the PS3.

Funny enough, Aliens vs Predator had superior 3d video quality than many if not all PS1 games due to having proper z buffering capabilities

Mate, how do I put this nicely....you are either breathing how bullshat straight out of your arse or are legally blind. There is simply no way anyone with functioning eyeballs would look at AvP on the jaguar and think it looks better then PS1 games. Hell it barely looks better then SNES games.

Atari didnt release proper documentation to devs and also, lazy devs abused the platform flexibility by releasing games using only the Motorola 6800 cpu instead of the custom chips (Tom and Jerry).

So atari didnt tell people how to use this contraption, but its the game devs fault for not investing work into doing atari's job for them? Not wanted to invest a slanted amount of resources into a small platform to make up for manufacturing defects doesnt make anyone "lazy". Any devs that WERE willing to invest silly amounts of time into a poorly documented system had the much more powerful 3DO to work with. The rest took one looka t the jaguar's tiny markete and high difficulty curve compared to the genesis and SNES and simply laughed it out of the room.

Sadly, Atari corp from the 90s had a string of unlucky events that simply were too much and the current atari only shares the name.

Luck tends to follow hard work and Atari has lacked both for decades. The jaguar was the epitome of decades of terrible business decisions made by greedy CEOs dating all the way back to the 5200.

In conclusion, no, the Jaguar wasnt a bad system as you describe it.

The jaguar was a 32 bit console masquerading as a 64 bit system (32 bit CPU, 32 bit GPU, "combined" by marketing stooges) witha complicated architecture, non existent documentation tot eh point atari's own programmers struggled with it, shipped with outdated early 80's style controller design, with a total lack of stand out software that resulted int he system being a wet flop. This is all objective fact.

 

[StrayKAT]

Such a shame. IMO they just didn't market it correctly or worked on international availability.

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.

For games? Gaming on Mac is still slim pickings, unfortunately. I get the feeling it'll improve though.

 

[Dr. Dro]

I honestly wasnt aware that they were selling or making games, because i havent seen not even one ad or article or nothing to make me even aware that it was alive.

Front-end and default OS aside, the VCS was ultimately a compact PC that could run any flavor of Linux and even Windows, you could run most of your Steam library on it. Last I saw if it was on a YouTube video from Gamers Nexus about a year ago.

 

[trsttte]

There's nothing wrong with the SOC. You would be surprised what a 2c/4t CPU can do.

AMD Ryzen Embedded R1606G Specs

Zen, 2 Cores, 4 Threads, 2.6 GHz, 25 W

www.techpowerup.com

I have two laptops older than that running Windows 11 perfectly. The specs for the VCS, while not stellar, were good.

I know a dual core can still pull some weight but for the asking price I think it's valid to criticize the processor power. It was well more than enough to run any of the featured games but from the GN review it struggled in most of the other things it also proposed to do (stream, youtube, etc.)

If you were buying it for a media center of sorts like I sugested for example, you'd not be getting a good value. Given the type of games they needed to run/emulate they could have been better off really doing what many were expecting - slapping a cheap "raspberry pi" like board inside a nice chassis like the ps classic and appealing to a bigger market by being cheap (i know several people that bought the ps classic just because of how cheap it was, heck I was almost one of them until I was told it only had the 10 "classics" that were not even the most relevant ones)

 

[80251]

@StrayKAT
Another DEC fan. Did you actually use any VAX-VMS systems back in the day?
Practically the only reason DEC hung on at my work (Cedars Sinai Medical System) was email -- IBM mainframes and mainframers were the gods of computing, email was beneath their pay scale.

Atari has been dead for decades it should've been allowed to die with dignity rather than kept on life support as not much more than a brand name.

 

[ShiBDiB]

I'm confused what this thing was trying to be, looks like a budget emulator build in a custom case. Just without the budget price.

 

[eidairaman1]

Commodore. Their Amiga line of machines were pretty awesome. But their attempt in the gaming sphere was the last nail in the coffin. They just had too much debt.

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.

They are a Nintendo subsidy

 

[watzupken]

In my opinion, all these retro consoles are quite pointless. People who are hardcore retro game players will be running some sort of emulator on their PC, and really very little reason to have a separate system for it. Also, this is not a cheap console.

 

[timta2]

They are a Nintendo subsidy

Which one are you referring to? There are six company names in the post you're responding to.

 

[StrayKAT]

@StrayKAT
Another DEC fan. Did you actually use any VAX-VMS systems back in the day?
Practically the only reason DEC hung on at my work (Cedars Sinai Medical System) was email -- IBM mainframes and mainframers were the gods of computing, email was beneath their pay scale.

Atari has been dead for decades it should've been allowed to die with dignity rather than kept on life support as not much more than a brand name.

Oh, I was still young. On the young end of Gen X. I just remember terminals and stuff.

 

[natr0n]

Zombtari just wont die

 

[AusWolf]

It's sad what most of the early tech innovators became. Atari dead, Commodore dead, IBM personal computing dead, DEC dead, Radio Shack bought by a meme fraudster. Only Apple remains out of those 70s hardware giants. Being Gen X, I grew up with all of them. I still like Apple, but surely there was room for another?

Let's be honest, it's not just PCs. Any form of entertainment, philosophy, politics, town design, car design, forms of communication among people, heck, even the freedom to smoke in a pub/bar... everything we were used to as kids is now dead or fundamentally changed. I wish the world slowed the F down a bit.

 

[StrayKAT]

Let's be honest, it's not just PCs. Any form of entertainment, philosophy, politics, town design, car design, forms of communication among people, heck, even the freedom to smoke in a pub/bar... everything we were used to as kids is now dead or fundamentally changed. I wish the world slowed the F down a bit.

Good point. I guess tech sticks out to me the most because it's also the last one to slow down. Even tech 10 years ago is a different beast. Everyone was chasing the smartphone then. Lots of variety and takes on it. That's all gone too.

 

[Neo_Morpheus]

pot calling the kettle black

"superior" only if you count the combined power of its multiple processors, not taking into account the difficulty of coding for such hardware. The same mistake sega would make with the saturn, and sony with the PS3.

Mate, how do I put this nicely....you are either breathing how bullshat straight out of your arse or are legally blind. There is simply no way anyone with functioning eyeballs would look at AvP on the jaguar and think it looks better then PS1 games. Hell it barely looks better then SNES games.

So atari didnt tell people how to use this contraption, but its the game devs fault for not investing work into doing atari's job for them? Not wanted to invest a slanted amount of resources into a small platform to make up for manufacturing defects doesnt make anyone "lazy". Any devs that WERE willing to invest silly amounts of time into a poorly documented system had the much more powerful 3DO to work with. The rest took one looka t the jaguar's tiny markete and high difficulty curve compared to the genesis and SNES and simply laughed it out of the room.

Luck tends to follow hard work and Atari has lacked both for decades. The jaguar was the epitome of decades of terrible business decisions made by greedy CEOs dating all the way back to the 5200.

The jaguar was a 32 bit console masquerading as a 64 bit system (32 bit CPU, 32 bit GPU, "combined" by marketing stooges) witha complicated architecture, non existent documentation tot eh point atari's own programmers struggled with it, shipped with outdated early 80's style controller design, with a total lack of stand out software that resulted int he system being a wet flop. This is all objective fact.

I am really confused. Are you trying to prove that my points are incorrect meanwhile your “counterpoints” are simply a repetition of my already stated points?

 

[HeadRusch1]

Atari needs to focus on selling retro T-Shirts. The Logo is cool....the nostalgia is cool, the games however...well maybe the Activision ones Back in the day when 64 pixels on screen at once was like magic to us. And for those of you who weren't born in the 60's or 70's, and might be wondering....no, none of us who had "Atari" were EVER impressed by their home VCS (2600) ports, but we were happy to just have something at home. I mean we got excited for hand-helds like Mattel Football which was just a series of blinking LED's for gods sake *it was a different time*.....

Now it's like..."Wait, I can see ALIASING on my 4K monitor! THIS GAME IS SH*T! TAKE IT AWAY AND DO IT PROPERLY!"

 

[AusWolf]

Atari needs to focus on selling retro T-Shirts. The Logo is cool....the nostalgia is cool, the games however...well maybe the Activision ones Back in the day when 64 pixels on screen at once was like magic to us. And for those of you who weren't born in the 60's or 70's, and might be wondering....no, none of us who had "Atari" were EVER impressed by their home VCS (2600) ports, but we were happy to just have something at home. I mean we got excited for hand-helds like Mattel Football which was just a series of blinking LED's for gods sake *it was a different time*.....

Now it's like..."Wait, I can see ALIASING on my 4K monitor! THIS GAME IS SH*T! TAKE IT AWAY AND DO IT PROPERLY!"

I wasn't born back then, but my childhood was filled with excitement as a game was installing on my PC because you never knew if it would end up running or not, and if it did, how much you had to decrease the resolution to get anywhere near playable FPS (which meant above 15-ish, not 60). Half-Life at 320x240, software rendering mode looked absolutely awesome! Where did this "I don't game under 60 FPS" bullshit come from, anyway? Kids don't know how to appreciate all the goodness showered onto them by the gaming industry these days.

 

[TheLostSwede]

Front-end and default OS aside, the VCS was ultimately a compact PC that could run any flavor of Linux and even Windows, you could run most of your Steam library on it. Last I saw if it was on a YouTube video from Gamers Nexus about a year ago.

So around the time it became available in retail...

 

[Dr. Dro]

So around the time it became available in retail...

Yup. Nada since then. Not a peep... this was the true failure. Even if it had bad specs vs. newer Chinese mini-PC designs or lacked the flaunt that a Mac mini has, the entire appeal is that it's an Atari box. It had its market.

 

[Kenboki]

This article isn't exactly right. I've heard from people who work for Atari that they are not abandoning the VCS but are switching manufacturers. They are in fact starting to produce attachments for the VCS in the coming year. The VCS is not dead.

 

[Macsnapon]

How about doing the right thing and retracting this irresponsible, misguided and ignorant article about the Atari VCS?

fyi- it’s not just a gaming platform… it’s a gaming PC designed around the Ryzen chips. My Atari runs a 500GB m.2 SATA with Windows Pro 11, 32 GB of RAM, and boots into AtariOS Linux, SteamOS, MacOS and pretty much everything else.

It runs GTA V better than most Consoles on the market… and it cost less than half of what my gaming laptop cost me. A perfect solution to get my wife playing games together.

Atari is a video game company and they wanted to bring back a console in PC form for gamers. They recently announced the end of the manufacturing contracts with their current provider and are looking for another partner to produce the next gen of Atari consoles.

Seriously, “LostSwede”, are you that desperate for clickbait that you want to pass on misinformation that you don’t even have the backbone to make up yourself? You’ve lost your credibility.

Oh, I was still young. On the young end of Gen X. I just remember terminals and stuff.

I used VAX-VMS systems back in 1989… SUNYMORVA was my VAX, and I had 1200baud dialup in my dormitory to do my COBOL and Turbo Pascal work remotely. I used to telnet into University@Buffalo at home and play Galtrader in my free time and do IRC with friends at home on FREENET.

I didn’t have an Atari, growing up, I had an Apple //e, one disk drive, color monitor and ImageWriter2. I sold it to my friend at work, got a LASER386 and 486 consecutively and switched to learning DOS and Windows.

Why is any of this important?

because people have gotten it into their heads that if they can’t game on their cell phones, iPads or Laptops, there’s no sense to gaming on anything but an XBox, PlayStation or Nintendo.
Atari is basically an AndroidOS driven XBOX.

Atari is only dead if no gamers want to code games for it. And those games can be played on any platform.

 

[lexluthermiester]

This article isn't exactly right. I've heard from people who work for Atari that they are not abandoning the VCS but are switching manufacturers. They are in fact starting to produce attachments for the VCS in the coming year. The VCS is not dead.

I'd heard it was selling briskly. So this seems at least plausible.

 

[Macsnapon]

I knew a few people that had that Jag, but they were hardcore Atari fans. It had some great games, but nothing that would be considered a "killer app" or system seller. The hardware was damn good by the specs, but dev tools were lacking. It was a great idea and had potential, but was poorly handled. Likewise, this VCS was a great idea poorly done.


There's nothing wrong with the SOC. You would be surprised what a 2c/4t CPU can do.

AMD Ryzen Embedded R1606G Specs

Zen, 2 Cores, 4 Threads, 2.6 GHz, 25 W

www.techpowerup.com

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.

And they still CAN. That’s why they designed it the way they did. Dual-booting into Windows or SteamOS was meant to keep the owners playing while they worked on the platform of AtariOS.

 

[Dr. Dro]

This article isn't exactly right. I've heard from people who work for Atari that they are not abandoning the VCS but are switching manufacturers. They are in fact starting to produce attachments for the VCS in the coming year. The VCS is not dead.

I hope so, and a VCS Mark II with say, Mendocino over this earlier generation Ryzen Embedded would be such a great upgrade.

But above all, they need to work on availability. A mini-PC with Mendocino and this casing/environment for $399, delivering worldwide... sign me up my good man.