I'm surprised it took them that long. That's a third time they've surprised me.
First one was when Indiegogo succeeded after being kicked out of Kickstarter. Second time - when they made it as far as making actual hardware (thouhg there are some caviats here).
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 adthe VCS in the coming year. The VCS is not dead.
I think you aren't reading between the lines. End of current manufacturing contract means no more consoles. Maybe they'll sell a few accessories and trinkets along the way (for the entire audience of 2-3 thousand people), and that's it. The only bright side is that their tiny current ecosystem will exist, cause it mostly relies on existing services (antstream, and Atari's own products that will continue to be supported on other platforms will keep it afloat for awhile as a side effect).
Even if we disregard their abysmal sales numbers, there is still a myriad of reasons why new hardware won't happen.
Most notable ones:
1) they are still being sued by Tin Giant. At this point they won't be able to find a competent team of engineers that will do work for Atari knowing that they may not get paid.
2) Low volume. The reason they had to terminate their contract with ASKPCB is because they have not enough volume or cash reserves to fullfil their end of the bargain. Same goes for PowerA and their overpriced controllers. I think the only thing they can safely manufacture even in tiny volume, is that pesky "classic" controller.
3) Other manufacturers won't risk dealing with "Atari", and a modern motherboard isn't something you can just order a dozen or two off PCBWay or sumptin'
How about doing the right thing and retracting this irresponsible, misguided and ignorant article about the Atari VCS?
I think we've woken up die-hard atari fans here... hold on to your hats, fellas!
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.
I don't think you even own a VCS, otherwise you'd know the real performance. It costs as much as a generic ryzen 3 laptop, only runs much slower and has no screen or keyboard (and that's at current discounted price! At launch it was even less cost-effective). There can be no "optimisation" magic like in case of Switch, cause all it is - a mini-PC that runs mainstream OSes. Heck, even their glorified AtariOS is just a barebone Ubuntu that runs overlay written in Unity for f$#%s sake, just so they can play a few 3D animations, while 99% of the time it runs a chromium frame and web-apps...
