What Atari needs to do with the VCS in 6 months...

[leech]

9 minutes ago, CPUWIZ said:

Why buy either?  I have too many computers already.

Ha, this is so true for me.  Doesn't help that one day I bought 10 thinkpads for 40 bucks one day.  Though I turned around and sold off some of those after upgrading memory and slapping SSDs in them.

10 minutes ago, CPUWIZ said:

Not sure what to do with that one, I can't think of any reason, that would prevent me from enjoying playing on system 'XYZ'.

 

PS4 RULZ TEH BOMB!!11! - Ok

XB_KICK YO ASS, BITCH11!! - That's great

8BIT IS TEH SHIT - Fine

NODOWNLODZ - Peachy

DISCS SCRATCH - Idiot

ha ha.  My point was it's a tired argument of 'you can build something similar for less'.  I mean the same could be same for the PS5 / XsX as well.  Would you have access to the same stuff?  Well currently yeah, I mean there literally is nothing at this point that you can't also play on Linux+Steam that is on the VCS

 

Here's a fun thing about digital only systems though.  There is for sure going to be a point in time where the company feels they made enough money and that's it.  Case in point, Sony at some point gave Little Big Planet out to anyone as a digital download on the PS3.  It seems now to be gone from my account.  I wanted to play it last night, but nope!  Ended up having to buy a copy off of ebay.

 

At least (so far) the Atari games from the store are DRM Free, so playing them on a generic Linux box will work.  This at least tickles those who are very anti-DRM. 

Also, 8BIT IS TEH SHIT!!!

[Matt_B]

49 minutes ago, leech said:

Yeah, but they are kind of ugly.  ?

so I guess the question is, why not go buy one of those and leave the ones who bought the VCS to dink around with the Linux based AtariOS and enjoy it for what it is?

That's pretty much what it comes down to. The VCS has one thing going for it, i.e. the case.

 

If they were to make it competitive on price with other mini PCs, that might be the edge that would allow them to sell a lot of units.

Otherwise, it's just going to be a machine for a handful of people on internet forums to get excited about the ways they can hack it. If you think that's fine, fair enough. However, this is the discussion about what they could possibly do to make it a long-term success.

[leech]

1 minute ago, Matt_B said:

That's pretty much what it comes down to. The VCS has one thing going for it, i.e. the case.

 

If they were to make it competitive on price with other mini PCs, that might be the edge that would allow them to sell a lot of units.

Otherwise, it's just going to be a machine for a handful of people on internet forums to get excited about the ways they can hack it. If you think that's fine, fair enough. However, this is the discussion about what they could possibly do to make it a long-term success.

Which is funny, as most are like 'Give us Stadia or Steam!'  So how does Atari make money on that?  For them to succeed they need to make money on it, right? 

 

My suggestion has been for them to go after every dev that already has a native Linux game on itch.io, gog, and Steam.  Simple to look up and say 'oh, Linux version available?  That'll be a quick port, easy money.'  That is an effective way they'll get their library growing.  This will give us the 'steam machine' without requiring steam.  There are specific people on the gamingonlinux.com site that would be all over that.  So many of them won't even buy games on Steam because of DRM, but they'll buy DRM free versions on GOG and itch.io.  That is the people they should really target.

[Matt_B]

Let's be realistic about this. If it were that easy to poach developers and publishers away from Steam, somewhere like Origin or the Epic Store - which have been offering huge monetary incentives to do so, far beyond the wherewithal of Atari - might have gained a little more traction. By and large they haven't, because Steam is already that entrenched. There are far many more gamers who want a one-stop-shop than competing ones.

 

Also, although the lack of DRM is a feature of GoG, it's been very off-putting for publishers who are concerned about losing sales to piracy, so it's a platform that works better by being complementary with Steam than as a replacement for it. As such, even if you could somehow bring every applicable game on GoG, which I don't think is realistic in itself, there'd still be a gaping hole due to the absence of Steam. I'd also note that the Humble Store also started out as DRM free, but eventually caved towards also being a re-seller of Steam keys, because that's the only way they could offer certain games.

 

Atari most likely haven't implemented DRM because they're cheap rather than out of principle; it's not like you can buy Vault or Tempest 4000 on GoG, after all.

 

The thing about the mini PC market, as opposed to the console one, is that you don't have to make your money by selling the hardware at a loss and making it back by selling games and subscriptions. Rather, everyone makes their money on the margin. They're not necessarily making a lot of it at the sub-$400 segment,  but it seems an easier market to be competitive in than the console one where not only are the competition selling well below cost but also with huge volumes of scale.

[leech]

I kind of figured the lack of DRM wasn't on purpose, they just didn't figure in nerds testing it out like I did. 

Most of the games that fit the idea of the device (retro style games) are all over on Steam for Linux, but on Steam there is really stiff competition.  Even the Switch haa the same tons of games now.  For the VCS there is currently hardly any, so developers wishing to go there would more likely get more sales (relative to user base / competition)  than they would on Steam.

The reason most of the developers don't go to Origin or Uplay, etc is because they suck...  you are also pitting PC digital stores compared to a console store.  There aren't store competitors on the AtariOS just like there are not store competitors on the Switch, Xbox or Playstation.

If you think of the AtariVCS as a modifiable game console (like the PS3 when it had the Other OS option) instead of a cheap PC in a cool case, you will understand more my position of getting games that are already running natively on Linux over to it

[Matt_B]

You're really straining things by comparing to the PS3. That was getting a slew of top quality native games from day one, while OtherOS - even while it lasted - was decidedly gimped in comparison with no access to online stores for PC games and a deliberately downgraded video driver that limited the open source games that could be ported. The situation with the VCS is the reverse of that with the VCS Store only offering a handful of indies, while putting Windows/Linux on it gives you access to all the regular stores and is the only way you're getting any AAA games for the foreseeable future.

 

The lack of competing stores on AtariOS is, as such, pretty much irrelevant when you can just boot it into another OS to get a far better selection of games.

 

I'd agree that Origin sucks, but it's still got way more indie games on it than the VCS Store, and I'd be surprised if that situation ever changes. Also, Uplay is Ubisoft Connect these days. Same shit, different name of course.

[zzip]

17 hours ago, Matt_B said:

I'm not sure how familiar you are with the barebones PC market but it's absolutely standard practice to sell systems without RAM and storage; Atari would be well advised to follow suit if they're serious about that market. A lot of mini PCs even come without a CPU and you add your own, although I'd think that the VCS is rather stuck with the one it's got because AMD don't make a lot of alternatives with the same pinout and there's the custom cooling solution to contend with. Although the eMMC is currently soldered to the board, they could easily make a version where it's simply not present. Simply leaving the chip out and making some changes to the BIOS settings might be enough in itself.

This is NOT a barebones PC, it's a consumer device that's intended to be plug and play.

 

I know some PC enthusiasts have this weird idea that everyone tinkers with their PCs on weekends, but in reality few people do.   Most want to buy a device that works without having to put in your own RAM or CPU.

[leech]

57 minutes ago, zzip said:

This is NOT a barebones PC, it's a consumer device that's intended to be plug and play.

 

I know some PC enthusiasts have this weird idea that everyone tinkers with their PCs on weekends, but in reality few people do.   Most want to buy a device that works without having to put in your own RAM or CPU.

Exactly this.  This is what Matt_B is not getting.

Sure, they tried to give people other reasons to buy it, but at heart they want to sell games on the Atari store.  Just because there aren't many games out for it now, doesn't mean it won't eventually.  The trick is how are they going to go about doing that?  There is already a plethora of easily 'ported' games out there to try to get onto the system.

[Matt_B]

4 hours ago, leech said:

Exactly this.  This is what Matt_B is not getting.

Sure, they tried to give people other reasons to buy it, but at heart they want to sell games on the Atari store.  Just because there aren't many games out for it now, doesn't mean it won't eventually.  The trick is how are they going to go about doing that?  There is already a plethora of easily 'ported' games out there to try to get onto the system.

I get it. I just think it's a strategy that's doomed to failure.

 

Let me put it this way. Atari have had nearly four years now to line up games for the VCS store and we've seen the results of it. They can't even get their best regarded games of recent years as a publisher on the platform (Rollercoaster Tycoon Classic and Tempest 4000) let alone anyone else's.

 

You're frankly delusional if you think that situation can be meaningfully changed in six months. The ease with which games can be 'ported' needs to be offset against the tiny size of the current market, and we still don't know even if - let alone when - Atari are going to go for a retail launch to attempt to increase that number.

 

The only games they're going to get are from a few no-name indies who want the exposure of a less crowded platform and those who want their game on an Atari platform for shits and giggles.

 

5 hours ago, zzip said:

This is NOT a barebones PC, it's a consumer device that's intended to be plug and play.

 

I know some PC enthusiasts have this weird idea that everyone tinkers with their PCs on weekends, but in reality few people do.   Most want to buy a device that works without having to put in your own RAM or CPU.

Let's face it. You've already got to open up the case, install an SSD, probably increase the RAM while you're at it, change the BIOS settings and install your own operating system if you want it to boot internally. That's a barebones PC, even if it's got some other functionality. ?

 

In terms of what people want to buy, I'd think that very few want an overpriced console with hardly any games. On the other hand, over thirty million Raspberry Pis have been sold with no storage or OS on board. Sure, they're not for everyone but they're for a heck of a lot more people than the VCS as it stands.

[zzip]

29 minutes ago, Matt_B said:

I get it. I just think it's a strategy that's doomed to failure.

 

Let me put it this way. Atari have had nearly four years now to line up games for the VCS store and we've seen the results of it. They can't even get their best regarded games of recent years as a publisher on the platform (Rollercoaster Tycoon Classic and Tempest 4000) let alone anyone else's.

The "exclusive game" strategy is doomed to fail.  Atari simply doesn't have the resources to take on the big three.   Putting Rollercoaster Tycoon or Tempest on it is not going to sell that many consoles.  

 

The only think that makes the VCS appealing is that it's open.   I'm not sure why Atari even bothers with a game store unless they have some surprises ahead.   Otherwise it will probably cost them more to run it then the revenue it generates.

[zzip]

37 minutes ago, Matt_B said:

Let's face it. You've already got to open up the case, install an SSD, probably increase the RAM while you're at it, change the BIOS settings and install your own operating system if you want it to boot internally. That's a barebones PC, even if it's got some other functionality. ?

 

In terms of what people want to buy, I'd think that very few want an overpriced console with hardly any games. On the other hand, over thirty million Raspberry Pis have been sold with no storage or OS on board. Sure, they're not for everyone but they're for a heck of a lot more people than the VCS as it stands.

Even the PS4/PS5 have you open the case to install a harddrive or SSD.   RAM looks like a pain to install on the VCS,  but I also believe RAM upgrades for most people will be unnecessary if you have the 8gb model.   If this thing has around the power of a last-gen console, last-gen consoles only have 8gb.

 

Raspberry PIs are weak.  You pay less, but you get less.   You can't virtualize MacOS or Windows 10 like you can on the VCS or other small PC.   I don't think the VCS is overpriced when you compare it apples to apples with other mini-PCs.   Like if you compare the price of the VCS bundle with controllers, then you need to add the price of controllers to the other mini-PC to make it and Apples to Apples comparison.

[leech]

2 hours ago, zzip said:

Even the PS4/PS5 have you open the case to install a harddrive or SSD.   RAM looks like a pain to install on the VCS,  but I also believe RAM upgrades for most people will be unnecessary if you have the 8gb model.   If this thing has around the power of a last-gen console, last-gen consoles only have 8gb.

 

Raspberry PIs are weak.  You pay less, but you get less.   You can't virtualize MacOS or Windows 10 like you can on the VCS or other small PC.   I don't think the VCS is overpriced when you compare it apples to apples with other mini-PCs.   Like if you compare the price of the VCS bundle with controllers, then you need to add the price of controllers to the other mini-PC to make it and Apples to Apples comparison.

RAM wasn't too bad to upgrade.  Too many people are not following the doc Atari posted (though they also don't mention the rubber bumpers on the bottom don't need to be completely removed, just remove the 'inner' part that works as a plug).  Then it is 4 screws, and then take a plastic seperator and pop off the back.  Then you open it like a clam, holding the front together so the wifi wires don't pop off. 

Then I think it is two ribbon things (probably the hardest part, they are the front usb ports) then I think it is 4 or 6 more screws.  Then you pop out the board ans swap ram.

[Matt_B]

9 minutes ago, zzip said:

Even the PS4/PS5 have you open the case to install a harddrive or SSD.   RAM looks like a pain to install on the VCS,  but I also believe RAM upgrades for most people will be unnecessary if you have the 8gb model.   If this thing has around the power of a last-gen console, last-gen consoles only have 8gb.

 

Raspberry PIs are weak.  You pay less, but you get less.   You can't virtualize MacOS or Windows 10 like you can on the VCS or other small PC.   I don't think the VCS is overpriced when you compare it apples to apples with other mini-PCs.   Like if you compare the price of the VCS bundle with controllers, then you need to add the price of controllers to the other mini-PC to make it and Apples to Apples comparison.

Sony obviously put in a lot of consideration for the upgrade potential of their consoles and the PS4/5 have covers for their drive bays that don't expose the rest of the machine's internals, so it's far less involved than with a typical PC and there's considerably less scope for damaging any components in the process. Microsoft went one better and you don't even need to open the case with the Series S/X because they've got an external slot, although they lose a point for requiring proprietary media. Much the same goes for most modern laptops, where you've got covers that pop off to get at the RAM and SSD, at least the ones where they'll let you at the internals at all.

 

Atari could have gone down that route, and there's at least a hit at the possibility of having a hatch in the bottom of the case to get at the RAM, however they didn't. They could re-design yet again for easy access, but I'd think they're better off rolling with it and selling to the people who find hardware exciting rather than scary. Maybe they should do something about those easily snapped cables though.
 

The reason I brought up the Pi was to demonstrate that there is indeed a market for barebones hardware, and it's quite a big one. Sure, they're relatively weak compared to AMD/Intel PCs  - although the gap is narrowing and the latest ones are about on a par with a 2010 laptop - but that just means that there's a gap in the market for someone who could offer the next step up.

 

I've already linked to several mini PCs more comparable in specs to the VCS earlier in the thread ranging in price from $143 to $299, with the ones at the upper end of that scale being considerably better featured than the VCS even purely from the narrow lens of gaming, while it's got a significant edge over some of the cheaper ones particularly when it comes to graphics. We could have a rather lengthy and technical discussion if you don't want to just take my word for it, but $200 seems about right. Atari were there once, with the initial crowdfunding at least, and I'm only asking them to go there again even if they've got to pare back some of the less essential features to do so.
 

Adding on the price of controllers for purposes of comparison only make sense if you're inclined to use them, and most PC gamers tend not to, preferring the keyboard/mouse combination. Atari seemed to have figured this out at the time of crowdfunding by offering options without them, but seem to have lost the plot of late by only offering the bundle with two controllers for pre-order at present time.

 

[leech]

4 hours ago, Matt_B said:

You're frankly delusional if you think that situation can be meaningfully changed in six months. The ease with which games can be 'ported' needs to be offset against the tiny size of the current market, and we still don't know even if - let alone when - Atari are going to go for a retail launch to attempt to increase that number.

 

The only games they're going to get are from a few no-name indies who want the exposure of a less crowded platform and those who want their game on an Atari platform for shits and giggles.

I'm not sure why you'd think 1) that it can't change within 6 months (remember the VCS hasn't even hit full retail yet, the backers are literally beta testers before it does, they are taking things into consideration (like easier set up to expand storage / memory).  2) since there is a a plethora of games that don't need any legitimate time to port, as they are already native to Linux and wouldn't require much more than an xml or json or whatever the AtariOS uses for something to show up in it...   Developers that hit there quicker will have more sales as there isn't much to buy at the moment and it's still at the same state that Steam on Linux had when it was released in 2013, I and many others practically bought everything that was released natively.  Some of the smaller, less successful Indie games could have a decent platform to get some notice, assuming more people buy the VCS when it hits retail.

 

So yeah who cares if they get some no-name indie games, some of those are far more fun than the garbage that gets churned out by Activision / EA / Ubisoft every year.

I recently bought this one, https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2021/01/bytten-studio-say-not-to-sleep-on-linux-in-their-postmortem-for-lennas-inception which seems to have not sold a whole lot of copies, but is reasonably fun so far! 

 

1 hour ago, Matt_B said:

Sony obviously put in a lot of consideration for the upgrade potential of their consoles and the PS4/5 have covers for their drive bays that don't expose the rest of the machine's internals, so it's far less involved than with a typical PC and there's considerably less scope for damaging any components in the process.

PS5 teardown I saw looked like it'd be kind of annoying to put in another disk.  That and they want to certify certain ones you can use.  I just had to look up m.2 SATA and buy one and it worked.

1 hour ago, Matt_B said:

Adding on the price of controllers for purposes of comparison only make sense if you're inclined to use them, and most PC gamers tend not to, preferring the keyboard/mouse combination. Atari seemed to have figured this out at the time of crowdfunding by offering options without them, but seem to have lost the plot of late by only offering the bundle with two controllers for pre-order at present time.

I don't know why you say this, there are games for the PC that definitely play better with controllers than with keyboard / mouse.  The main reason they were offering systems without controllers is because of it being a more open system, you can easily use other controllers with it.  The DS4 works flawlessly with it, with the one minor problem that the audio output then becomes the controller, which is kind of annoying.  Then again the same thing happens in standard Linux, but there you have a method to change it back to HDMI out   But this is on their list of things to fix.

 

Funny thing is, the VCS isn't even in full launch yet, but it already has about the same amount of games that PS5 has that aren't just PS4 enhanced games.  Oh wait, it has more, as last I saw the only one that was really exclusive to the PS5 was the Demon Souls remake. 

 

The VCS is good for anything from 2600 onto PS3-ish games.  Someone was going to even try emulating the PS3 on it (though my doubts are high on that, PS3 emulation is kind of crap at the moment where some games work great and don't need much hardware, and other games completely slow down some of the highest end systems.  So I'd be amazed if anything for the PS3 worked smoothly on it).

 

It's a fun little console that is open to hack / change things on.  Whether or not people thinks it's a feasible machine to sell... meh.  Whether or not it becomes a success or a failure, only time will tell.  But the potential is definitely there.  Hell even if you install GamerOS on it and use it strictly as a Steam Machine, I'd still call that a win.

[Matt_B]

17 minutes ago, leech said:

I'm not sure why you'd think 1) that it can't change within 6 months (remember the VCS hasn't even hit full retail yet, the backers are literally beta testers before it does, they are taking things into consideration (like easier set up to expand storage / memory).  2) since there is a a plethora of games that don't need any legitimate time to port, as they are already native to Linux and wouldn't require much more than an xml or json or whatever the AtariOS uses for something to show up in it...   Developers that hit there quicker will have more sales as there isn't much to buy at the moment and it's still at the same state that Steam on Linux had when it was released in 2013, I and many others practically bought everything that was released natively.  Some of the smaller, less successful Indie games could have a decent platform to get some notice, assuming more people buy the VCS when it hits retail.

Sure, things could change in six months, but it seems a fair bet based upon the track record of the past nearly four years that they won't.

 

I'm certainly aware that the VCS hasn't even hit retail yet. I've even mentioned in previous posts that we don't even have a date yet for when that's going to happen, not that it would really matter because Atari have been missing so many deadlines with this project that most people got surprised when they finally managed to hit one. Still, I'm sure it'll be hitting stores in weeks, not months, right? ?

 

I'd presume that porting to the VCS is relatively easy, but things like re-mapping mouse/keys to controllers will need doing and I'd expect there to be at least some sort of minimal QA procedure to go through before games can go on the store. They're not going to let people just skip that step unless they want a lot of broken games, pirated games and malware on there, at any rate. So, it's probably the work of a few days to a week rather than an afternoon. It's worth bearing in mind that it's similarly easy to port games between Steam and the Epic Store but in practice it rarely happens because few developers can be bothered to put in even a minimal amount of effort when they'd be looking at only a handful of resulting extra sales at best.

 

If you want to look at an example of how getting into a less successful system early affects sales, take Towerfall on the Ouya. It sold 7000 copies against a user base of around 200,000 making it the most successful on that platform. Project that against the 10,000 userbase for the VCS and you're getting sales of 350 units. That's for the biggest hits too; the average probably wouldn't break three figures.

 

Porting to a system like the Switch might be a lot more work, but with 60+ million users you might be looking at a couple of million sales. Even if you can only hit a tenth of the attach rate because things are starting to get a little crowded there, that's still a couple of hundred thousand. Anyway, it's small wonder that indie devs are all porting their games to it rather than, say, the Epic Store or the VCS.

 

17 minutes ago, leech said:

So yeah who cares if they get some no-name indie games, some of those are far more fun than the garbage that gets churned out by Activision / EA / Ubisoft every year.

I recently bought this one, https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2021/01/bytten-studio-say-not-to-sleep-on-linux-in-their-postmortem-for-lennas-inception which seems to have not sold a whole lot of copies, but is reasonably fun so far! 

If I had to pick a must-have list of indies from the past few years it'd be games like Celeste, Hades, Dead Cells, Hollow Knight, Shovel Knight, Into The Breach, FTL, Bastion, Undertale, Rime, Outer Wilds, Disco Elysium, Superhot and maybe a few I've forgotten. You can't get any of them on the VCS store though, just a seemingly random selection of lesser known games.

 

Also, it doesn't have to be an either/or between indie and AAA games. Most other platforms offer you both. A VCS booting into another operating system will do just that, even; it's only in AtariOS mode that you're stuck with a tiny selection of indie games.

 

17 minutes ago, leech said:

PS5 teardown I saw looked like it'd be kind of annoying to put in another disk.  That and they want to certify certain ones you can use.  I just had to look up m.2 SATA and buy one and it worked.

I'm not sure what you saw, but you've just got to pop off the cover to get at the M.2 slot. Sure, you've got to be careful to get a compatible drive but the same applies to the VCS because not all M.2 drives will work with it either, and I don't think that all memory that fits in the slots is necessarily going to be compatible. Ah well, just something to do your homework with in both cases.

 

17 minutes ago, leech said:

I don't know why you say this, there are games for the PC that definitely play better with controllers than with keyboard / mouse.  The main reason they were offering systems without controllers is because of it being a more open system, you can easily use other controllers with it.  The DS4 works flawlessly with it, with the one minor problem that the audio output then becomes the controller, which is kind of annoying.  Then again the same thing happens in standard Linux, but there you have a method to change it back to HDMI out   But this is on their list of things to fix.

I've got a controller for my PC but it only sees very occasional use playing actual PC games and spends far more time as the controller for my Raspberry Pi emulation set-up. Most games are still best played with keyboard and mouse. Also, the controllers from any modern console - of which I have a few - are trivially easy to pair with a PC for occasional use so I doubt I'd even bother getting a replacement when it finally bites the dust.

 

17 minutes ago, leech said:

Funny thing is, the VCS isn't even in full launch yet, but it already has about the same amount of games that PS5 has that aren't just PS4 enhanced games.  Oh wait, it has more, as last I saw the only one that was really exclusive to the PS5 was the Demon Souls remake. 

You're not seriously going to lean on that argument, are you? There is such a thing as quality versus quantity and I know which side I'd prefer to argue between Astro's Playroom and the entire VCS catalogue.

 

In any case, being able to play enhanced PS4 games, while you're waiting for all the next gen games delayed due to covid, is a massive selling point for the PS5. People would be singing from the rooftops about it if the VCS was capable of such a feat. Also, let's see how their libraries pan out over the course of the next year; it's as sure a bet as any that the PS5 is going to get a lot more games coming to, and better ones as well.

 

17 minutes ago, leech said:

The VCS is good for anything from 2600 onto PS3-ish games.  Someone was going to even try emulating the PS3 on it (though my doubts are high on that, PS3 emulation is kind of crap at the moment where some games work great and don't need much hardware, and other games completely slow down some of the highest end systems.  So I'd be amazed if anything for the PS3 worked smoothly on it).

Yeah, PS3 emulation is still in its early days; you can play Demon Souls online but most games won't even start, even when you're running on the most powerful hardware.

The emulation performance of the VCS across other systems is decent enough though, and that seems to be emerging as its best use case; a souped up Raspberry Pi-style emulation box capable of a better stab at systems like the Wii and PS2.

 

17 minutes ago, leech said:

It's a fun little console that is open to hack / change things on.  Whether or not people thinks it's a feasible machine to sell... meh.  Whether or not it becomes a success or a failure, only time will tell.  But the potential is definitely there.  Hell even if you install GamerOS on it and use it strictly as a Steam Machine, I'd still call that a win.

Yeah, that's more or less my take too. It's just that almost all the interesting stuff people have done with it has been PC mode rather than under AtariOS. Whether that's emulators, AAA games or even a decent selection of indies that does appear to be the way to go with it.

 

It's interesting to note that getting Cyberpunk 2077 running on it, albeit quite badly, has drawn far more interest from the media than any of its native games. Perhaps it's got a future as a low-spec modder's platform of choice?

[zzip]

14 hours ago, leech said:

RAM wasn't too bad to upgrade.  Too many people are not following the doc Atari posted (though they also don't mention the rubber bumpers on the bottom don't need to be completely removed, just remove the 'inner' part that works as a plug).  Then it is 4 screws, and then take a plastic seperator and pop off the back.  Then you open it like a clam, holding the front together so the wifi wires don't pop off. 

Then I think it is two ribbon things (probably the hardest part, they are the front usb ports) then I think it is 4 or 6 more screws.  Then you pop out the board ans swap ram.

The video I watched had too many parts that needed to be removed to get to the RAM.   Everything you take out has the potential to get lost or break.   Maybe they did it wrong, IDK.   But I would want a device that has RAM that is intended to be user upgraded to just have a compartment lid that pops off.   Like the STe, or even better, modern laptpops

 

13 hours ago, Matt_B said:

Sony obviously put in a lot of consideration for the upgrade potential of their consoles and the PS4/5 have covers for their drive bays that don't expose the rest of the machine's internals, so it's far less involved than with a typical PC and there's considerably less scope for damaging any components in the process.

Exactly.   The m.2 slot of the VCS is fairly easy to get to, but the RAM requires more disassembly.

 

14 hours ago, Matt_B said:

Microsoft went one better and you don't even need to open the case with the Series S/X because they've got an external slot, although they lose a point for requiring proprietary media. Much the same goes for most modern laptops, where you've got covers that pop off to get at the RAM and SSD, at least the ones where they'll let you at the internals at all.

I don't like that it's proprietary.   Of course it exists because there's no standard for m.2 class drives that can be inserted without opening the case.   I find m.2 a pain to work with because the screw is so tiny.   Couldn't they have devised a snapping mechanism like RAM uses?

 

12 hours ago, leech said:

That and they want to certify certain ones you can use.  I just had to look up m.2 SATA and buy one and it worked.

The PS5 requires insanely fast SSD because they are doing next-gen things like loading in completely new assets on the fly.   I don't thnk they've certified a single drive yet, and when they do, they aren't going to be cheap!

[zzip]

9 hours ago, Matt_B said:

Yeah, PS3 emulation is still in its early days; you can play Demon Souls online but most games won't even start, even when you're running on the most powerful hardware.

The emulation performance of the VCS across other systems is decent enough though, and that seems to be emerging as its best use case; a souped up Raspberry Pi-style emulation box capable of a better stab at systems like the Wii and PS2.

PS3 emulation has been in it's early days for years now :)   It would be scandalous if the VCS turned out good PS3 performance because it was commonly stated that the reason the PS4 doesn't offer PS3 backwards compatibility is because it isn't capable of emulating it at a usable speed.  If they ever produce a mature PS3 emulator, I'd expect it to need much better specs to run than the VCS has

[youxia]

9 hours ago, Matt_B said:

Most games are still best played with keyboard and mouse

It's 2021, come on. Most games, barring some obvious (and niche) genres such as strategy or adventure are best played with a gamepad. Tbh, I even play most FPSs this way these days.

[leech]

1 hour ago, zzip said:

  I find m.2 a pain to work with because the screw is so tiny.   Couldn't they have devised a snapping mechanism like RAM uses

I have some IDE to m.2 adapters that do this very thing, so yes!

[leech]

43 minutes ago, youxia said:

It's 2021, come on. Most games, barring some obvious (and niche) genres such as strategy or adventure are best played with a gamepad. Tbh, I even play most FPSs this way these days.

For sure, let's name a few.  GTA (all of them), Assassin's Creed... oh hell ANYTHING that is third person and supports analog movement is better on a controller.

The plethora of games he mentioned like Dead Cells are also better on a controller.

[leech]

1 hour ago, zzip said:

The PS5 requires insanely fast SSD because they are doing next-gen things like loading in completely new assets on the fly.   I don't thnk they've certified a single drive yet, and when they do, they aren't going to be cheap!

Ha, will be funny if nothing ever gets out that is fast enough for them that doesn't double the price of the console.

Speaking of fast.  I slapped an nVME in my living room PC.  Pretty sure the OS boots quicker than when I hit delete and have to wait for the UEFI to load... it is pretty sick.

[zzip]

10 minutes ago, leech said:

Ha, will be funny if nothing ever gets out that is fast enough for them that doesn't double the price of the console.

Speaking of fast.  I slapped an nVME in my living room PC.  Pretty sure the OS boots quicker than when I hit delete and have to wait for the UEFI to load... it is pretty sick.

I expect it could double the price of the PS5 short term for a decent-sized SSD.   Hopefully the price drops like most things for the long-term.

[youxia]

I had an NVM for quite some time, it's supposed to be 4 times faster than my normal SSDs, but I can't say I really feel any difference in Windows or games. Normal ones are just fast enough.

[zzip]

17 minutes ago, youxia said:

I had an NVM for quite some time, it's supposed to be 4 times faster than my normal SSDs, but I can't say I really feel any difference in Windows or games. Normal ones are just fast enough.

Yeah,  there are plenty of videos testing game load times between mechanical HD,  SATA SSD and NVMe SSD on PC.    NVMe makes very little actual improvement.   The bottlenecks are somewhere else.

[leech]

1 hour ago, youxia said:

I had an NVM for quite some time, it's supposed to be 4 times faster than my normal SSDs, but I can't say I really feel any difference in Windows or games. Normal ones are just fast enough.

Seems to me to be faster on better optimized operating systems like Linux.  Like my Thinkpad that has two nvme drives in a Raid 0 is sick fast.  Applications pretty much start instantly.  If it weren't for network lag and such, everything would be just scary fast.  Guess I could do a disk benchmark or something on the VCS vs my thinkpad for giggles.