The Atari VCS Controversies Thread

[godslabrat]

34 minutes ago, racerx said:

No, you couldn't. 

 

Each of those would be a separate license, and everything Atari is done as cheaply as possible. 

Indeed.  None of the big three will play well with each other, much less a has-been on a hotel venture doomed to failure.  If L'Atari calls any of the main players on a hotel deal, I doubt that phone call even gets returned.

[toiletunes]

The thing that concerns me the most about an Atari themed hotel, it's only going to attract a very limited clientele- older gamers. In order to be successful, they should broaden the base, maybe offer Netflix for moms, something like that.

[leech]

3 minutes ago, toiletunes said:

The thing that concerns me the most about an Atari themed hotel, it's only going to attract a very limited clientele- older gamers. In order to be successful, they should broaden the base, maybe offer Netflix for moms, something like that.

Well, they need to host 70s style hot tub meetings!

[Lord Mushroom]

12 hours ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

It is fair because Atari doesn't exist in a vacuum. In both video games and clothing, they're literally a drop in the ocean, where they're lucky to still be remembered by old fogies like us.

What I am saying is that it is unfair to say Atari is a weak brand because they make less money on clothing than Nike. Apple makes a lot less money from clothing than Nike, but that doesn´t make Apple a weak brand. It is like comparing apples and oranges, and saying that oranges are better because they taste more like oranges.

 

12 hours ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

If they are what you consider to be a "strong" brand, then what on earth does that make multi-billion dollar brands Apple, Sony, Supreme, Nike, etc., etc.?

You have to separate the brand from the company. Microsoft is one of the most profitable companies in the world, but its brand is terrible. Atari has a tiny profit, on the other hand, but a strong brand.

 

12 hours ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

When Atari put themselves up for bankruptcy in 2012 and were selling off the logo and most of the 70s IP as a bundle, they were only asking for $2 million.

The brand is worth nothing unless you have a good idea of how to use it. Even the uninspired exploitations of Frederic Chesnais has shown that the brand was worth a lot more than that.

 

12 hours ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

A truly strong brand would be worth billions.

Dorment brands are never bought for a lot of money. That doesn´t mean they aren´t strong brands. Think of dorment strong brands as having a huge value in the right hands, and a tiny value in the wrong hands.

 

12 hours ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

Also if it were a strong brand, then that logo, which is really the only thing unique that the VCS has going for it, would've moved a heck of a lot more than 10k~ units.

The VCS is an illustration of Atari´s strong brand. If it had been put on indiegogo by a random company, it would have brought in a tiny fraction of what Atari got, and it would probably never even have been made. Put an Atari logo on the turd, and it reaches $3 million. It may even sell in the tens of thousands.

 

12 hours ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

Sorry, but this makes me laugh every time I see it. They are not even in the same galaxy as Apple, which generates enough money to start being considered a trillion dollar company at this point. Odd that Atari has gone through owner after owner, and gone through CEOs like frat house goes through kegs, and yet that wild new success still seems to elude them.

What I am saying is that right before Steve Jobs came back, Apple was down. If somebody had told you at the time that Apple was a strong brand, you would have laughed in their face, pointing to their financial situation. But while the company was in deep shit, the brand was still strong. Waiting to be exploited. And exploited it was.

 

Atari is in the same situation. Whether someone is able to do something similar to it as was done to Apple is unlikely, but in the right hands, that is exactly what would happen.

 

None of the owners of Atari, probably since Nolan, have had the necessary vision/skills to achieve something like that.

 

12 hours ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

As has been argued on these forums for a few years now, the VCS was supposed to be the Next Big Thing, and some faithful even claimed it would be a PS5 killer. Fred thought the answer was mobile gaming, then crowdfunding, then cryptocurrency and now it's NFTs. The common thread there is that Atari isn't leading, they're just following the crowd.

Again, you are confusing the strength of the brand with the use of the brand.

 

12 hours ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

Does the company need a strong creative vision, sure, but Nolan Bushnell or Al Alcorn or this new CEO isn't going to swoop in with some grand new vision of making the company relevant again. They'd need to come up with a whole slew of new and innovative games and tech to do that, which is easy to say, near impossible to do

I agree. Steve Jobses are very rare.

 

12 hours ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

unless you've somehow managed to hire a bunch of geniuses that will turn it into the New Giant of Gaming & Tech. Those geniuses don't want to be part of a has-been brand that has been poorly run and just relies on 3rd parties to develop everything for them...they make their own start-ups and become billionaires in the process. 

I don´t think hiring geniuses would be enough. Microsoft hires brilliant people all the time, and they still suck. Atari needs a visionary owner.

 

It would be a lot easier for genius entrepeneurs to succeed if their start-up had a famous brand like Atari. Of course, now that Atari SA is worth about $300 million, that´s not going to be an option for a non-billionaire.

 

Steve Jobs could have made start-ups outside of Apple, and did with success, but it was only when he returned to utilize the Apple brand that things really started to happen.

[Lord Mushroom]

12 hours ago, racerx said:

No, you couldn't. 

 

Each of those would be a separate license, and everything Atari is done as cheaply as possible. 

I am saying that such licenses can be acquired. Some IP holders would say no, others would say yes. I think they could get SEGA´s approval, for example.

 

Also, Atari will not be running these hotels, so their cheapness will not affect the hotels.

Edited April 17, 2021 by Lord Mushroom

[Lord Mushroom]

12 hours ago, godslabrat said:

Indeed.  None of the big three will play well with each other, much less a has-been on a hotel venture doomed to failure.  If L'Atari calls any of the main players on a hotel deal, I doubt that phone call even gets returned.

Nintendo would be unlikely to take part. The others are possible. Even if they are not, there are plenty of holders of wonderful IP out there.

[Lord Mushroom]

9 hours ago, toiletunes said:

The thing that concerns me the most about an Atari themed hotel, it's only going to attract a very limited clientele- older gamers. In order to be successful, they should broaden the base, maybe offer Netflix for moms, something like that.

If it were to be an Atari only (or Atari mainly) themed hotel, I agree it would have limited appeal. It needs to be a video games in general hotel.

 

In addition to the usual stuff like restaurants, gym and a bar, there will also be a bakery and a movie theater.

 

I am starting to think I should start ending my posts with "I am not affiliated with Atari".

[Lord Mushroom]

9 hours ago, leech said:

Well, they need to host 70s style hot tub meetings!

They have said the hotels with include "function rooms".

[racerx]

1 hour ago, Lord Mushroom said:

What I am saying is that it is unfair to say Atari is a weak brand because they make less money on clothing than Nike.

No, it's a weak brand because Atari makes less money on clothing than Nintendo. I wouldn't judge Nike's strength on its console sales, so I'm not sure what you're going for there. Nintendo's juggernaut IP library dwarfs Atari's, and that directly translates to apparel licensing revenue. 

 

In 2021 Atari is a niche brand, which is a polite way of saying "weak."

[Lord Mushroom]

54 minutes ago, racerx said:

No, it's a weak brand because Atari makes less money on clothing than Nintendo. I wouldn't judge Nike's strength on its console sales, so I'm not sure what you're going for there.

Shaggy the Atarian told us to compare Atari´s clothing sales to that of any real clothing brand. I interpreted that as meaning a company which is primarily in the business of selling clothing. Although he might have meant brands which sells clothing on the side.

 

Nintendo is of course a much stronger brand than Atari.

54 minutes ago, racerx said:

Nintendo's juggernaut IP library dwarfs Atari's, and that directly translates to apparel licensing revenue.

IP is different from brand. A random company could buy a fantastic portfolio of IP and still have a worthless brand.

 

The fact that Nintendo´s sale of clothing is mostly due its IP means their brand is not as much stronger than Atari´s brand as their superiority in clothing sales suggests. Nintendo clothes are usually about Mario, Zelda, Pokemon or something, and the actual brand plays a side role, if at all. Whereas Atari clothes are usually only about the brand itself.

 

54 minutes ago, racerx said:

In 2021 Atari is a niche brand, which is a polite way of saying "weak."

Atari is a very well known brand, which conjures mostly positive feelings. It is put to use in niche products. There is a difference. If the strength of brands was equal to their company´s profit, Aramco would be one of the strongest brands in the world.

Edited April 17, 2021 by Lord Mushroom

[+x=usr(1536)]

2 hours ago, Lord Mushroom said:

The VCS is an illustration of Atari´s strong brand. If it had been put on indiegogo by a random company, it would have brought in a tiny fraction of what Atari got, and it would probably never even have been made. Put an Atari logo on the turd, and it reaches $3 million. It may even sell in the tens of thousands.

The fact that it raised $3M on Indiegogo on the basis of having the word 'Atari' slapped onto it is a fair point (nostalgia's a hell of a drug), but that's also the sword that it dies on.  The audience that that specific nostalgia appeals to unequivocally is a small one, and it's getting smaller all the time as we age and croak.  With few exceptions, there aren't many people under their mid- to late-30s who care about Atari no matter how aware of it as a brand they may be.  Atari logo T-shirts mean very little when they're being worn ironically by a few hipsters.

 

There's another side to this: selling in the tens of thousands may be a significant accomplishment for an Indiegogo campaign, but ultimately means very little in the wider marketplace.  Even if the Atacobawx manages to hit six-figure sales, it's still an extremely niche product, and one with ongoing costs (the online side) for Fauxtari.  Every single one of these devices has a post-sale cost attached to it for them, and without economies of scale or other revenue streams to make that a workable proposition, it's a financial liability as soon as someone gets it home, plugs it in, and sticks it onto their Wi-Fi.

 

Ultimately, it's a flawed and insignificant company and it suffers from brand recognition that really doesn't have much worth in today's market.  To be fair, though, that's not a Fauxtari-specific problem: I'm well aware of Bell + Howell's past as a manufacturer that pushed the state of the art of early filmmaking equipment.  But that doesn't mean that I want them to sell me a humidifier, cell phone mount that clips onto a car's cabin air vents, or as-seen-on-TV tactical lantern.  The name means nothing when it's slapped onto everything.

[Lord Mushroom]

15 minutes ago, x=usr(1536) said:

there aren't many people under their mid- to late-30s who care about Atari no matter how aware of it as a brand they may be.  Atari logo T-shirts mean very little when they're being worn ironically by a few hipsters.

Old video game brands and consoles are in amongst millennials. It is not just worn ironically. Their knowledge of Atari may be very limited, but they think it is cool, and that is all that matters.

 

23 minutes ago, x=usr(1536) said:

it suffers from brand recognition that really doesn't have much worth in today's market.

If used with a video game related product/service, which was worth buying, it would prove its worth. If the hotels concept is well executed, that will be an example of that. 

[Cebus Capucinis]

Well, yeah, any "well executed" use of IP is an example of the worth of the effort.  That's baked in to "well executed" by default.

 

Now, "well executed" and "the corpse of Atari being flogged" belonging in the same sentence....that you'll have to convince me of.

 

It seems like you're saying "If they do it well, it'll be great!" whereas we're saying "They're not going to do it well!"

[Lord Mushroom]

25 minutes ago, Cebus Capucinis said:

Well, yeah, any "well executed" use of IP is an example of the worth of the effort.  That's baked in to "well executed" by default.

I mean that if the hotels offer lots of different video games to play, and generally have a well made video game theme, having the Atari brand will boost revenue significantly compared to not having the brand, which will boost profits considerably for the hotel owners.

 

25 minutes ago, Cebus Capucinis said:

It seems like you're saying "If they do it well, it'll be great!" whereas we're saying "They're not going to do it well!"

I am saying the Atari brand is so strong it is at least the difference between doing badly and ok, or ok and well, or well and very well, or very well and great.

 

I am guessing the company will be run ok, so that means they will do well. And by well I mean millions or tens of millions in profit per year the next 20 years.

 

But if a Steve Jobs buys it, it would become a trillion dollar company within a decade. Of course, this is a much less likely scenario, but possible.

Edited April 17, 2021 by Lord Mushroom

[godslabrat]

You also have to consider what would happen if a Steve Jobs walked into l'atari right now.  What if someone went to the board and said "Forget about these hokey cash-in schemes.  We need to stop lining our pockets in the short term and re-invest what we make into building an empire 10-15 years from now."

 

The people in that room would be drawing straws to see who got to throw Steve off the Eiffel Tower.

 

It's not just the CEO.  It's a company that, as has been said, has no vision, run by people who probably expect it to die at any time and are trying to get all the cheddar they can out of it before it goes.  They aren't investing in a future company because they don't expect there to be a future. 
 

Talking about a wizard CEO is kind of missing the point... l'Atari's culture is one of immediate gratification.  Nothing more

[Cebus Capucinis]

If you think that Atari, stemming from its current form, will make "tens of millions" for 20 years and possibly be worth one trillion dollars (making it larger than even Amazon) you're grinding up Jaguars and smoking the plastic.

[leech]

Ha, so maybe Elon Musk should buy Atari, he already has a deal for games to be in the Teslas.... embed AtariOS into the Tesla Entertainment System, and get a ton of kids playing Atari games in the back seat again.  This is how the VCS could potentially succeed.  Get the OS out there onto other devices.

[Lord Mushroom]

1 hour ago, godslabrat said:

You also have to consider what would happen if a Steve Jobs walked into l'atari right now.  What if someone went to the board and said "Forget about these hokey cash-in schemes.  We need to stop lining our pockets in the short term and re-invest what we make into building an empire 10-15 years from now."

 

The people in that room would be drawing straws to see who got to throw Steve off the Eiffel Tower.

If the Steve Jobs had a majority of the shares, or even just a big part of the company, they wouldn´t be able to throw him out. In fact, the Steve Jobs would probably either want the CEO job for himself, or at least hire somebody from outside Atari.

 

Also, if the Steve Jobs has good ideas, a non-incompetent CEO would listen to a good long term plan. I doubt that the Atari CEO is incompetent. Even Frederic wasn´t incompetent, he just lacked a vision to develop the brand. If somebody had come to him with a good long term plan to make a lot of money, he would probably have listened.

 

Also, it wouldn´t take 10-15 years to realize the first ideas. A few years is enough to get the first big idea(s) going.

 

1 hour ago, godslabrat said:

It's not just the CEO.  It's a company that, as has been said, has no vision, run by people who probably expect it to die at any time and are trying to get all the cheddar they can out of it before it goes.

 

I disagree, it all comes from the CEO or owner. Then everybody has to get with the program, or they are out.

[Shaggy the Atarian]

2 hours ago, Lord Mushroom said:

Shaggy the Atarian told us to compare Atari´s clothing sales to that of any real clothing brand. I interpreted that as meaning a company which is primarily in the business of selling clothing. Although he might have meant brands which sells clothing on the side.

 

You said: "they are doing well in the clothing industry," so you brought up a huge $1.5 trillion industry. Making a few million dollars in a market this massive is not "doing well" and you can't act like it's only fair to compare them to nothing. Are they making a profit for themselves, yes. But so are a lot of companies that have little to no brand value. It also doesn't equate to being a brand with the strength of mythical proportions. 

Quote

The fact that Nintendo´s sale of clothing is mostly due its IP means their brand is not as much stronger than Atari´s brand as their superiority in clothing sales suggests. Nintendo clothes are usually about Mario, Zelda, Pokemon or something, and the actual brand plays a side role, if at all. Whereas Atari clothes are usually only about the brand itself.

 

 

Instead of using anecdotes, assumptions and shirts, let's look at what the experts say:

 

Forbes: Nintendo is the 87th most valuable brand on the planet

Atari: Doesn't even show up on their 2020 Most Valuable Brands list - I also tried to find a business profile to Atari on Forbe's site like they have for Nintendo above, and cannot find one. Probably because they would be embarrassed to give a nice profile to a has-been company that has been nothing more than a penny stock until recently.

 

I also read their methodology for determining a strong/valuable brand over twice and couldn't find any mention of T-Shirts/clothing sales in there. Odd. 

 

Quote

The VCS is an illustration of Atari´s strong brand. If it had been put on indiegogo by a random company, it would have brought in a tiny fraction of what Atari got, and it would probably never even have been made.

Every faithful person around here gets really upset when I point this out, but you must not have ever heard of the Ouya, a no-name newcomer that raised over $8 million on their promise of a cheap game console, they had over 55,000 backers from that alone. No brand, no name, yet they managed to rake in multiple times more interest and money than Atari did with the VCS.

 

Quote

Put an Atari logo on the turd, and it reaches $3 million. It may even sell in the tens of thousands.

 

You've undermined your own argument about how strong the Atari brand is here - it's worth about $3 million, so about $1m more than what Atari was asking for back in 2012.  Like I said previously, it's enough to open a single Chuck E. Cheeses location - it's not even close to enough to open a single Dave & Busters (which cost about $10-15m to open, per site, where they have around 130 locations at present). 

 

In the world of business and markets, this is nothing. Doesn't matter how many kids you see wandering around with Atari T-Shirts - it's just like racerx said, it's niche. Or rather...

 

 

Selling "tens of thousands" of hardware products is something that console makers can do every month. The VCS will be lucky to even match the Jaguar's lifetime sales when all is said and done. As I've said before, all indications are that it will be the worst selling Atari console released to date. No one is going to jump from buying a $20 shirt to a $300+ console that has nothing special about it and weak game library with few exclusives because of that logo. 

 

Meanwhile, Nintendo can slap their name on any hardware product it instantly sells hundreds of thousands - even flops like the WiiU sold hundreds of thousands of units in the first months. Nintendo's stock issues have become the stuff of legends, while a pile of the Flashback 7s/8s/9s/Whatever will sit around until the store shoves them out on clearance sales.

 

And this is all why we pointed out long ago that Tacos are more valuable than Atari is...

[Lord Mushroom]

1 hour ago, Cebus Capucinis said:

If you think that Atari, stemming from its current form, will make "tens of millions" for 20 years and possibly be worth one trillion dollars (making it larger than even Amazon) you're grinding up Jaguars and smoking the plastic.

I said millions or tens of millions. They are already making millions, and 20 years is a long time. Their profit is five times higher now (with the exception of the covid year) than it was 8 years ago, so they are moving in the direction of tens of millions. As long as the average annual profit over the next 20 years is between $2 million and $99.9 million, my prediction holds true.

 

The trillion dollar scenario had the pre-condition that a Steve Jobs enters the scene. Steve Jobs basically did that 25 years ago to Apple, so it is almost by definition a correct scenario.

Edited April 17, 2021 by Lord Mushroom

[Lord Mushroom]

31 minutes ago, leech said:

Ha, so maybe Elon Musk should buy Atari, he already has a deal for games to be in the Teslas.... embed AtariOS into the Tesla Entertainment System, and get a ton of kids playing Atari games in the back seat again.  This is how the VCS could potentially succeed.  Get the OS out there onto other devices.

He is so famous that he doesn´t need the brand to get people excited about the things he is doing. But if he wanted to get seriously into video games, or maybe computers, the Atari brand could add a little fuel to the fire.

[Cebus Capucinis]

Atari could be successful if there was a precondition of it being successful, you say?

 

 

I have to remember to stop posting in this thread.

[toiletunes]

It's a hit!*

 

 

 

 

 

 

*(definition of 'hit' subject to change without notice, void where prohibited, not available in all locations, )

Edited April 17, 2021 by toiletunes

[leech]

49 minutes ago, Lord Mushroom said:

He is so famous that he doesn´t need the brand to get people excited about the things he is doing. But if he wanted to get seriously into video games, or maybe computers, the Atari brand could add a little fuel to the fire.

Atari Space-X ship that looks like the Asteroids ship!  How weirdly full circle that'd be?

[godslabrat]

1 hour ago, Lord Mushroom said:

Even Frederic wasn´t incompetent

Lol, peace out.✌️