TrogdarRobusto

My taco preference varies with mood. Sometimes I like soft, sometimes I like a hard shell. Big fan of Pollo Asado. Sometimes fish is the right call, especially on a nice spring day. Always have to have cheese. I love cheese. I am basically Wallace from Wallace and Grommet in that regard. Over time I migrated from Tabasco to Cholula Original Hot Sauce, I mean, I am always open to recommendations. I live in Northeast, not really the hot sauce capital of the world.

I mean, Jeff seems cool with us? I talk to him and Giles from time to time. We are having a great time working with him. Akka Arrh was amazing. He is already deep into his next Atari title. I mean yes, we can't change what happened with TxK back in the day, but we can celebrate Jeff's career and continue to work with him now. That is what we are going to do. You want to define Atari's entire, decades long relationship with Llamasoft by one single, albeit dark spot event on the timeline? I mean that seems like a depressing path.

We did that with Aquaventure. And I know Saboteur and Yars Return were available first as homebrew carts, but I like that we gave both of those an 'official' Atari release. We do want to do more prototype releases. And every time we discuss one I reach out to Matt Reichert.

Don't get me started on the 'fan-less' chip we were promised. I can assure you Atari was just as angry about the need to put a fan in the VCS (the cost, the noise) as the end users were. Ooof.

Honesty is the best course here ... I honestly I don't know the answer. I can say that pretty much all the game hardware brands tend to allow publishers to use platform logos on software products as long as they follow certain guidelines for use. I mean, it is a Jaguar game right? Don't you want to indicate that on the packaging? Give us time on this, and I am pretty confident it will resolve in a way that makes sense.

This is a lot, I'll give it a shot and hopefully I don't sound defensive or flippant because I appreciate your passion for Atari and what you want it to be (what we all want it to be). -- we are making games again, which the community wants and we want. Game development is a big part of what made the Atari brand what it is, and in order to sustain the brand and keep it relevant for another 50 years we need to return to our roots in gaming. So no argument there. We released around 20 games in the last 30 months. Some of them are smaller Recharged games, which I think are really solid and also were a perfect place for us to start (smaller games we knew we could do well). Now the games are getting bigger. Lunar Lander: Beyond, Haunted House and Days of Doom are really interesting, really good games. Mr Run and Jump (just released) is rocking an 81 in opencritic and metacritic. We are working with Jeff Minter again (Akka Arrh released in February and a new title coming next year). And they all go through QA, and the reviews tend to be good to very good. And we play them, a lot, I promise you. Maybe your software QA comment relates to the VCS? -- I can't litigate the VCS launch after the fact. There were a lot of issues with the OS rollouts. It was a small team, they did their best. So much energy went into dealing the supply chain nightmare during that period and I know it robbed time from software development. You can bang on about that all you want, we can't change the past. And while that project preceded the current management team, we learned a lot from it, I can assure you. -- We haven't abandoned the VCS, the community that formed around that platform is super passionate and always hungry for more content. If you want to advocate for specific compatibility, I'd do it in the VCS Discord. Not everything we are asked to do make sense for us, but every suggestion made in good faith is considered. The product is what it is. It can only be stretched so far into other use cases. There are a lot of people who wanted the VCS to be the next Switch or PS5, that was not the goal, nor was it a realistic goal. Doesn't mean it cannot find its niche and live on like so many other Atari platforms do. -- I appreciate that the hard core community wants some new Jaguar hardware. Maybe (not my role in Atari). But hardware projects take time and money and you don't take them on lightly. There is no quick win in hardware development. Our attitude is anything worth doing is worth doing well, so we are going to take a thoughtful approach to these projects and not just fire them out. To your point, do you want a mini-Jaguar or do you want a Jaguar Flashback? I bet I know the answer. We have a roadmap of projects that are going to be done in an order the team thinks makes the most sense, and probably is tied to the relative commercial prospects of each. -- You aren't going to like everything we do. Some of the things we do you would have done differently. We are going to make the decisions we make, and see how it plays out. Right now, the Atari 2600+ is looking like a hit based on preorder volume. Does it have everything you want it to? No. Will we modify it in the future? Maybe. Will we make something else that does have the functionality you want? Maybe. We will discuss it with you and the rest of the community. And that represents positive change I hope. -- Our licensing team is very, very focused on quality. You referenced some strong partners like Retrocade. The new Atari 50 Arcade1Up is solid, we had it at PAX, and it is selling really well. Lego. Cariuma. Quality is the north star here, so keep an eye on this space because things have changed. -- We are in dialogue with the community, you can expect that only to increase. We know it is important. -- We do respect this community. Without this community the brand probably would not have made it through the dark periods in such good shape. So, we owe a debt to the fan and developer community. --

Shucks. I was sure that was going to win you back! I came in about halfway through the VCS era. It took a while to change Atari's posture in social media from block and ban to discuss and engage. We have a much thicker skin now. Anyone who made personal attacks against individuals was typically banned, but that is a universal practice not specific to Atari. If we need to unblock accounts feed them to me and I will make it happen. The communications around the VCS were ... not to my taste. I think it is a cool retro device that does some neat things. I have one in my living room I use exclusively for streaming tv and movies from all the various things I subscribe to. The one stop shopping via Google Chrome is awesome, for me anyway. I have one in my office I use for gaming, but it gets less use. A really dedicated community has formed around the VCS, and we are doing our best to feed content into the store. I do think it should be a good platform for homebrew games to be sold and showcased, same with indie games. And if we can extend the ecosystem around it to add more utility even better, which is our goal. The curse of the VCS was timing. It came to market when manufacturing and parts costs kept rising, really the entire supply chain was a nightmare. It is certainly open to criticism. I have my issues with it -- and if we were going to do a VCS mark 2 it would be different (my wish list includes easier access to memory and SSD slots, fan-less performance that we were promised with the Ryzen but was not realistic, better processor). Really, Atari has a history of creating hardware that tries hard to do something novel, and not all of them hit the mark. But they all make a good faith effort, and even odd ducks like the Jaguar still have a passionate fan and developer base (Jagfest 2023 anyone?). I am over-responding to your initial post, but ... I do that. My point is that there is nothing wrong with asking tough questions. We are getting all sorts of criticism in this thread about how we implemented the 2600+ ... bring it on. All valid discussion. Sometimes a product is exactly what it was meant to be and also doesn't check the boxes of certain user groups. That may be the case here. This is meant for mass market / retro enthusiasts. The 2600+ is super easy to use, pretty damn affordable, has a solid build quality, and kicks out a crisp, clean HDMI image. You can compare it to a Hyperkin all day long from a functional stand point if you want, but once you get one in your hands you can see that they are very different beasts. Will we listen to criticism and recommendations and adapt to better meet the needs of the developer community? I bet we will. We can't win you back in a day, it is going to take a while. I think it is worth the time and the effort.

That is a good question. I don't know the answer, honestly. I'll poke around and see if I can find out.

I don't see why not. If your concern is using "Atari" in the title, as far as I know as long as you aren't monetizing the brand without permission you are good to go. There is a company we use to scan the interwebs for people who sell counterfeit Atari goods or otherwise monetize our brand in some way. You'd be amazed at the volume of knock-off merch and hardware. Fan/analyst/media content should not be caught in their net, but sometimes it is. And if that happens, we can set it free if we know about it. So if you get a notice, let us know and we will deal with it. If you decide to sell Atari logo t-shirts on your show or other knock-off merch we send Yorgle, Grundle and Rhindle after you.

I'm heading out for dinner ... be back later ...

Funny, I have often referred to Atari as a 50 year old start-up. The company has changed hands quite a few times. The question is "are the current hands good ones?" I hope to prove the answer is "yes" over time.

I wouldn't be so hasty, I think the idea of archiving the forums is an interesting one. Maybe one of the game museum's would want a copy for their collections? It isn't an official answer, but if having a third-party archive of the forums to date is important to the community than we will take that idea seriously -- Al would need to weigh in of course.

Well, we want to commercialize our IP / re-release games we own. Al can help us figure out some of these edge cases, and of course the community can weigh in.

I may have misunderstood question number 2 ... if I did my apologies. I'll let Al address it.

Um ... who have you been talking to AtariLeaf? I mean, it seems likely, right?

We really tried to keep the price reasonable while keeping the build quality high. We didn't see the point of bringing out a $600 2600. That just becomes a vanity project. The are hundreds of 2600 and 7800 games out there ... at $129.99 the Atari 2600+ makes those games accessible to a much broader population, folks who jsut want to turn on the power, plug in an HDMI cable and play.

Almost all the new games and collections we make come out on all the modern consoles and PC ... the idea of porting old Atari games to other legacy hardware systems is an interesting one. Not sure how viable that is commercially, but maybe?

What country? I can find out if distribution is planned for that market ... at least near term.

I think Albert has answered these questions already, and better than I could. But here goes: 1) You own today what you owned yesterday. There is no change to how AtariAge/Atari views homebrew content. We anticipated this question, and we aren't quite sure how else to answer it. If you made the game, it is yours until you decide otherwise. 2) all the information and forum activity for non-Atari hardware are extremely valuable to the community, the industry and to Atari. We own the rights to tons of games published on non-Atari hardware after all. 3) I hope you stick around and help sustain and grow the AtariAge community, and tells us what you think about what Atari is and can be in the future.

No one from the infogrames era is involved in the company. I personally don't understand the mentality that the only valid Atari is the original Atari. But if it means anything, Nolan is an advisor to the company, we talk to him all the time. I personally speak with him a few times a year. He is a super interesting guy. We do see a spiritual connection between the original and what we are trying to accomplish. And we are Atari ... plain and simple.

No chance. that content is super valuable to the community. And remember, Atari owns a ton of games that were released on various systems from the console, handheld and PC eras.

The Atari 2600+ is available for preorder already in many countries. Here is a list. For the latest look here https://atari.com/products/atari-2600-plus under international Availability. Australia - EB Games Austria - Games Only Benelux - Bol Canada - Amazon France - Amazon Germany - Amazon Italy - Amazon New Zealand - EB Games Poland - RTV Euro AGD Slovenia - Igabiba Spain - GAME Switzerland - CeDe United Kingdom - Amazon United States - Amazon

Hey. We will take "not all bad" as a starting point and work up from there!

Part of the XP program's mission is to release carts for prototypes and rare games. Granted, we also release some more common favorites but expect a mix.

We have released a ton of new games over the last two years. About half of them have been from the Recharged series, which modernize classic games without changing the core gameplay. The other ten or so are completely new games, some based on old IP and some new IP. We are making games ... new software. We have also announced a bunch of games that are releasing between now and March. Check them out ... https://atari.com/collections/games