The What If? machine! (Atari buy AmigaOS)

[leech]

So, let's go down memory lane here.... As the legend goes, when some Atari engineers had left and formed the company that developed the Amiga, Atari had loaned them some money.  Commodore swept in and paid off that loan and obtained the Amiga for their own 16/32bit era machine.

 

Now, we have the highly criticized Atari VCS which in theory should be out sometime... What if it were a huge success?  What if Atari S.A. becomes a multi billion dollar company?  And what if they buy out Cloanto, Aeon and Hyperion.  Finally after ~40 years, there would be an Atari Amiga.  They could even call it the Atari 1850XLD! 

 

It had to be said, as this is the funniest 'retro joke' I could think ever be made up. 

[carlsson]

Atari were also in negotiations to distribute Nintendo's 8-bit console - I think it was called AVS before it got repackaged as NES.

 

What if Nintendo buys whatever is left of Atari S.A and grabs the very few IP properties worth any money - Centipede and Pong? Sure they would protect all their rights, but we got rid of one set of jokers and probably at least wouldn't have to worry about cryptocurrencies and odd hotel launches under Nintendo's realm.

[youxia]

Please, let's not mention Nu-Tari and Amiga in the same sentence. Poor ol' girl had over 2 decades of bad luck and greedy hucksters wanting to take a bite, even if there's very little to scrap over. Last thing its fans need is the VCS clowns to be mixed in (even jokingly).

[leech]

1 hour ago, youxia said:

Please, let's not mention Nu-Tari and Amiga in the same sentence. Poor ol' girl had over 2 decades of bad luck and greedy hucksters wanting to take a bite, even if there's very little to scrap over. Last thing its fans need is the VCS clowns to be mixed in (even jokingly).

Ha, this is true.  Well there is always Gateway, apparently Acer brought that back as a brand.  Like one more huckster owning Amiga wouldn't even be noticed at this point.

[leech]

3 hours ago, carlsson said:

Atari were also in negotiations to distribute Nintendo's 8-bit console - I think it was called AVS before it got repackaged as NES.

 

What if Nintendo buys whatever is left of Atari S.A and grabs the very few IP properties worth any money - Centipede and Pong? Sure they would protect all their rights, but we got rid of one set of jokers and probably at least wouldn't have to worry about cryptocurrencies and odd hotel launches under Nintendo's realm.

I do own a switch, but never have really liked Nintendo.  Wish Sega was still the Good Sega.  I mean they still publish games, and even hire porting houses for Linux ports.  But they are far from the Sega of the SMS and Genesis/Megadrive days!

 

Really just wish a single entity would buy Amiga and stop the fighting over it.

[carlsson]

To be honest, I think that neither Atari nor Amiga really holds any real value these days. The Amiga consists of old patents that must've expired by long ago, some intellectual properties in firmware and operating systems that were revolutionary 30 years ago but ... not so much today. The brand is valuable to those who were around back then, for the current generation it must mean as much as Plymouth or Pontiac do for car enthusiasts. Yes, I know that AmigaOS 4.x has been developed for 20+ years as well as super expensive PowerPC based hardware but frankly I don't see where that hardware excels over regular Intel/AMD or even ARM based hardware these days, often at a fraction of the asking price.

[leech]

1 hour ago, carlsson said:

To be honest, I think that neither Atari nor Amiga really holds any real value these days. The Amiga consists of old patents that must've expired by long ago, some intellectual properties in firmware and operating systems that were revolutionary 30 years ago but ... not so much today. The brand is valuable to those who were around back then, for the current generation it must mean as much as Plymouth or Pontiac do for car enthusiasts. Yes, I know that AmigaOS 4.x has been developed for 20+ years as well as super expensive PowerPC based hardware but frankly I don't see where that hardware excels over regular Intel/AMD or even ARM based hardware these days, often at a fraction of the asking price.

The thing OS4.1 has going for it is kind of the same thing Haiku has going for it.  It is FAST and light weight.  At least in theory.  Mind you an operating system by itself is a curiosity without applications to run on it.  It is argued by some that the Amiga has some worthwhile applications to use still, whether newer stuff is missing features, or an Amiga version is easier to use.  Same goes for the Atari ST's library.

Hell, I want to do writing on one of them as the temptation to sit and browse the internet mostly goes away on older platforms for me.  And it isn't like I need more than a spell check and maybe grammar checking (which can be off anyhow).  I don't need all the other Office stuff.

[Hwlngmad]

On 11/17/2020 at 10:40 AM, carlsson said:

To be honest, I think that neither Atari nor Amiga really holds any real value these days. The Amiga consists of old patents that must've expired by long ago, some intellectual properties in firmware and operating systems that were revolutionary 30 years ago but ... not so much today. The brand is valuable to those who were around back then, for the current generation it must mean as much as Plymouth or Pontiac do for car enthusiasts. Yes, I know that AmigaOS 4.x has been developed for 20+ years as well as super expensive PowerPC based hardware but frankly I don't see where that hardware excels over regular Intel/AMD or even ARM based hardware these days, often at a fraction of the asking price.

I would say that both have their own caches these days.  However, unless you are keyed into those communities, Atari still has brand recognition whereas the Amiga really doesn't in eyes (and most likely minds, too) of the general public.  Still, like Plymouth and Pontiac, and to paraphrase Rick Blaine from Casablanca, "We'll always have Hemicudas and Trans Ams."