The New Atari VCS FAQ

[Mockduck]

AppleTV+ added to Apps. Also, breaking Apps out into a list thread here: 

 

[Mockduck]

Interesting status update and info from a quarterly financial filing by Atari: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/atari-annual-results-2020-2021-170000106.html?guccounter=1
 

ATARI VCS

The Atari VCS began shipping to original backers at the end of 2020 for the pre-orders made through the Indiegogo platform. Direct preorder sales began shipping in Q1 of 2021. The retail and commercial launch started in June 2021 with outlets including GameStop, Best Buy and Micro Center in the USA, along with JB Hi-Fi and other distributors in Australia and New Zealand. The team is focused on additional Atari VCS deliveries in anticipation of the 2021 holiday season, while evaluating opportunities to add additional retail markets in 2022.

 

In the coming months, Atari will continue to build out the content offerings and capabilities of the VCS including:

• Food Fight – Recently-announced reimagining of the arcade & 7800 classic, coming first to Atari VCS in 2021 with exclusive features.

• Additional indie publishers and developers bringing innovative and original games to the platform, including Graffiti Games, Akupara, and others.

• More Atari franchise ports, such as Tempest 4000, Rollercoaster Tycoon and others.

• Native retro emulation, starting with titles from the Atari 7800 and DOS PC games.

• Atari VCS Homebrew Initiative, offering creator and community sharing tools for amateur game makers.

• Cloud game streaming with direct access to popular services like Stadia, GeForce Now, Luna and Xbox

• Enhanced productivity with direct access to Google’s G-Suite of Gmail, Sheets, Slides and other apps.

• Streamlined access to PC Mode, with easy-to-use USB thumb drive accessories.

Earlier in the document, they discussed some of the difficulties in getting the VCS to market:

 

BUSINESS OVERVIEW AND REVENUE

 

As of March 31, 2021, Atari is reporting consolidated revenue of €21.4m, compared with €24.0m the previous year. The decrease (-10.9% at current exchange rates and -6.9% at constant exchange rates) is related to the drop in licensing revenue, down almost 45%, which has been significantly affected by Covid-19 and to a lesser degree to the slowdown in the video game division; faced with rising user acquisition costs the decision was taken to optimize marketing spend, thus improving the profitability of the video games division. These trends overshadow the ramp up of the first deliveries of the Atari VCS since December 2020 and the start of the blockchain activities, which account for nearly 12% of revenue for the period. The activities related to NFTs and the Atari Token started during this year and generated €2.5m of revenue.

[+x=usr(1536)]

I'm wondering if they just inadvertently spilled the beans regarding Tastemakers' future plans (emphasis mine):

Quote

The Atari Group has successfully launched new business lines in the recent years and intends to pursue such initiatives. The Atari arcade gaming machines launched under license by Arcade 1 Up / Tastemakers, LLC prove to be a continuing success. The Atari Group has recently extended the scope of that partnership, adding new games, new models and even home casual slot machines. As a result, the licensing agreement has been extended until 2029.

Hadn't heard anything previously about plans to launch a range of slot machines for home use.  Granted, I'm not really terribly interested in gambling machines so could easily have missed that one, but it's an interesting statement.

 

Eight years on the licensing agreement sounds lengthy to me (I would have expected 3 to 5, max.), but not knowing the terms of the contract can't really say much beyond that.

 

Most of the rest of it looks like what would have been expected.

[joeatari1]

Very excited to see them mention Tempest 4000 and Rollercoaster Tycoon with relation to the VCS.  Hopefully there will be some fine tuning and streamlining of the UI to iron out a few bugs.  I still can't get out of Chrome or a gaming session of over an hour without going to the machine and physically shutting it off with the switch.

[zzip]

17 hours ago, Mockduck said:

Streamlined access to PC Mode, with easy-to-use USB thumb drive accessories.

Trying to figure out what this means?

The best thing they could do to streamline access to PC mode is make changing boot order easier

[Mockduck]

55 minutes ago, zzip said:

Trying to figure out what this means?

The best thing they could do to streamline access to PC mode is make changing boot order easier

Yeah, I think I will start a new thread to discuss the annual financial text rather than conduct it in this relatively clean stickied thread here.

 

 

[Mockduck]

Resurrecting for a quick post in this thread: a video runthrough of how to get your VCS from out of the box to ready to play in both AtariOS and PC Mode:
 

 
 

[Mockduck]

I get asked for copies of these pretty regularly through the YouTube and Facebook channels, seemed worth putting them here. These are the VCS manual PDFs that used to be on the old Atari.com, but they got rid of it when they updated the web site this past year.

Atari-VCS-Classic-Joystick-User-Manual.pdf Atari-VCS-Modern-Controller-User-Manual.pdf Atari-VCS-User-Manual.pdf PC-Mode-Create-Windows-Boot-Drive.pdf RAM-Installation-Guide.pdf SSD-Installation-Guide.pdf

[joeatari1]

This should be pinned at the top.  @justclawsor @jaybird3rd could you please do so?

[Ashlee - VCS Support]

We do have some updated manuals on the website, hope this helps!  https://atari.com/pages/vcs-manuals

[Blockbuster]

Does anyone know if you can pair more than two VCS controllers at one time. We’re better explained. I have four controllers that are pair with the VCS but when I go into a game like Neo sprint and pick four players, it still won’t let me connect a third controller can we only have two connected at the same time? Maybe I’m doing something wrong. 

[zzip]

56 minutes ago, Blockbuster said:

Does anyone know if you can pair more than two VCS controllers at one time. We’re better explained. I have four controllers that are pair with the VCS but when I go into a game like Neo sprint and pick four players, it still won’t let me connect a third controller can we only have two connected at the same time? Maybe I’m doing something wrong. 

If the OS detects four controllers connected simultaneously. but Neo Sprint doesn't, it might be an issue with Neo Sprint.    I don't have enough controllers to test this though.

[Blockbuster]

Thank you. I will try with another multi player game. I see all of the controllers listed under Devices in settings, but I can only connect two at a time via Bluetooth, and I have not found any documentation stating if multiple controllers greater than 2 is even supported by the VCS. 
I’m loving this modern piece of retro btw.  Not hating one bit, just learning. 

[Blockbuster]

Update. After rebooting. Newsprint allows the four controllers. Love that you can use both Joystick and modern. All players can use which one they are comfortable with. So much fun.