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News article possible end of VCS


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My estimate and informed guess based on forums, software sales, stock and share data, etc, is that the VCS has sold about 25,000 units. I bet there's another 10-15,000 in a warehouse somewhere, and with deep discounts and better marketing maybe they can move about half of that stock. If they go gangbusters with games and can showcase it more, maybe they can produce another 50k units in a few years and see where they get, but a million units seems pure fantasy to me.

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32 minutes ago, Atarick said:

My estimate and informed guess based on forums, software sales, stock and share data, etc, is that the VCS has sold about 25,000 units. I bet there's another 10-15,000 in a warehouse somewhere, and with deep discounts and better marketing maybe they can move about half of that stock. If they go gangbusters with games and can showcase it more, maybe they can produce another 50k units in a few years and see where they get, but a million units seems pure fantasy to me.

They've got to overcome this insane BS about not being able to sell the VCS outside the US.  That is the most short sighted, dumb move they could have made and there is NO excuse for it.  If Atari want to lose money and want to fail, then leaving stock in a warehouse and denying sales to the 95% who live outside the US is a surefire way of doing that.

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6 hours ago, leech said:

Heh, now if Valve decided to step in and buy them... think about it, Steam Deck is almost a perfect companion device to the VCS, if you put SteamOS onto it.  Hell, I should benchmark some stuff, and see how well the VCS compares to it, performance wise.  (remember the Steam Deck only pushes 1280x800, and most stuff on the VCS runs fine at lower resolutions as well). 

 

My Switch sits there and collects dust, I've actually probably bought about the same amount of games for the VCS, which I play more often. 

 

Hopefully Atari can figure out their place in the world, and I'm hoping Orange Pixel releases the rest of their library for the VCS.  I mean most, if not all of their games already have Linux versions.

I  should just assume your posting is a joke since you both imply that somehow Valve could derive some value from a console they could design themselves in a weekend and that there's more entertainment value in a VCS than a Switch.

 

If no one with deep pockets has shown interest in Atari to this point (after countless years of being an inexpensive target), I doubt that's going to change in the future. The IP is probably too well-worn at this point and of minimal future value to make the effort worth it. That's probably why it will continue to shuffle between single or small group investors. There's value enough for them, but likely not enough for someone bigger. The big companies tend to go after major IP that sells in the millions and studios with deep engineering talent. Neither of those are Atari. So if the company does change hands again, I expect it to be more of the same, where the company can turn a modest profit with smart decisions and takes dangerous hits from bad ones.

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6 hours ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

Honest question, how many of those are exclusives?

 

For everything that isn't, that is great that the VCS did get support and will get software support through next year, but I don't think it's an entirely fair comparison when previous the 5200/7800/Lynx/Jaguar didn't have the type of gaming infrastructure that exists today. Plus when it comes to these "officially released" VCS titles they aren't really ports...they're just the PC versions that they're paying Atari to get on the store. I'm sure you know a port back-in-the-day was a lot more work than just remapping your button layouts and picking a different platform to export to in Unity. 

How many exclusives did the 5200 have,  or the 7800/Lynx/Jaguar or even the ST?   Good ones?   Ones that sold the system to people who weren't already Atari fans?    It's something Atari hasn't done well since the 2600.    No one is expecting VCS to set the world on fire,  it's a console that exists as fan service, not to take on Nintendo, Sony or Steam.   Let's stop pretending it's worthless while putting some of those old consoles on pedestals.   The 5200 was a failure,  was on the market for a shorter period than VCS.  The Jaguar was a failure, also only on market for two years.   Ended up selling for $50 because nobody wanted them.   You wouldn't know it from the way Jag is worshiped today.

 

6 hours ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

they're just the PC versions that they're paying Atari to get on the store. I'm sure you know a port back-in-the-day was a lot more work than just remapping your button layouts and picking a different platform to export to in Unity. 

We don't live back in the day.   These days games are virtually identical across all platforms,  they're built from the same codebase.  Honestly, why would you want a port done the way it was back in the day when those ports were usually inferior?

 

2 hours ago, Atarick said:

It was always a modestly marketed and produced console for a focused set of backers and fans. That's it. If it went bigger they'd have loved it, but that's not where they are (nor honestly where hardware is). 

Right, it seems to me they expected modest volume and produced modest stock.  It's not like retailers received palettes of these and they rotted on the shelf, they only sold through 3 retailers as far as I know and they were online only items except for Micro Center.   I thought these things would show up in Target in the retro aisle where it would be right at home,  but they didn't do that.   They didn't even sell it through Amazon.     The marketed the hell out of the crowdfunding campaign and created an internet buzz-  so they are capable of doing that,  they barely did anything when they released to retail.   To me that says they mostly made it for backers with some extra stock for people who missed out (or didn't want to risk crowdfunding)

 

 

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9 hours ago, THX-1138 said:

I think they are trying to say Atari went from expecting to sell a million units, to only selling 10,000 instead.

If they produced a million units, where's the rest of them?   People would be picking them up for $30.  

 

7 hours ago, leech said:

It is weird, I feel there is a lot of hate for Atari, some of it is founded, but some of it seems like it's from people that feel betrayed by the brand (with various sites saying the death of Atari happened in 1984 when the they were sold off in chunks, I would argue if you're going to use that reasoning, it died when a bunch of engineers left and Nolan sold to Warner).

Yeah the old "not the real Atari game",    I would go with 84 too.   Atari's heyday was 1980-1984 and it was never the same after the 1984 sale.

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I can only speak for myself, but I “hated” (not really) Fred Chesnais’s Atari because of the obvious exaggerations and lies. There are many examples, but here’s one of the best ones:

 

Shot: https://www.theregister.com/AMP/2018/03/22/atari_lempty_box/

 

Chaser:

https://www.theregister.com/AMP/2018/06/21/atari_interview_in_full/
 

Their crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo was laughably amateurish, exceeded in idiocy only by “Tommy Tallarico’s Intellivision Amico.” Both of the VCS showrunners ended up taking Atari to court for nonpayment of wages. The VCS was late, poorly supported, and lacks many of the promised features. 
 

It’s cool that VCS eventually released and many fans are satisfied with what they got, especially at bargain prices, but it’s not like Atari had flawless execution here. 

 

And no, the story doesn’t say that Atari shipped 2 million units for revenues of €2.3 million. VCS was deeply discounted soon after retail launch, but never as low as €2.3 per console. I swear this kind of gullibility is how we get projects like “Retro VGS,” “Coleco Chameleon,” “Atari VCS,” and “Intellivision Amico” in the first place. THINK!

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4 hours ago, GraffitiTavern said:

I think bottom line is Atari simply didn't have the vision or revenue to support a modern console, I enjoyed the new games Atari has come out with and BPM Boy almost made me buy the system(still might with it on sale). The hardware itself is fine imo. VCS isn't weaker that a contemporary system like Switch, but Switch has the budget to develop big games to show the system off, while Atari can't afford that. It also can't afford to market the system, no one I know IRL even knew the system existed. One of the big things that's kept me from buying the system is lack of physical media, one reason I've stuck with Switch.

"Vision or revenue" is key. I know some here like to hate on the Evercade for some reason, but that's an example of how you do something different enough from the big guys to distinguish yourself and then have a clear, practical vision to keep on supporting both the platform and your growing user base with relatively modest resources at your disposal. That's an example to BOTH those who thought it was a good idea to bring out the VCS and what appears to have been a "buy us out" smoke and mirrors thing with the Amico. The former (Atari) wasn't ambitious or distinctive enough (in terms of overall design) given the resources at their disposal and the latter (Amico) might have worked if anything they said was actually true (i.e., besides the usual things, their sustainable user base number they quoted).

 

In terms of your last point, I do think the VCS could have been helped, at least a little, with offering physical media as an option (in addition to the more modern user-friendly digital store), even if it was just a generic SD card with a sticker and simple Switch-like package (and I'm not saying it would have changed much, I'm just saying that that at least would have been something more distinctive about it outside of the whole "you can run other OS's" through an external drive). They could have put the energy/resources they put into releasing new Atari 2600 physical media into that. I think the Atari 2600 physical media wasn't a bad idea, but I feel like the price point was way out of whack and the potential user base was too small (I mean, I was certainly tempted at times, but for various reasons even I passed on ALL of them). It's not like they were offering new Atari 2600-compatible consoles to go with them.

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47 minutes ago, zzip said:

Right, it seems to me they expected modest volume and produced modest stock.  It's not like retailers received palettes of these and they rotted on the shelf, they only sold through 3 retailers as far as I know and they were online only items except for Micro Center.   I thought these things would show up in Target in the retro aisle where it would be right at home,  but they didn't do that.   They didn't even sell it through Amazon.     The marketed the hell out of the crowdfunding campaign and created an internet buzz-  so they are capable of doing that,  they barely did anything when they released to retail.   To me that says they mostly made it for backers with some extra stock for people who missed out (or didn't want to risk crowdfunding)

 

 

The lack of marketing is probably a resource thing. The Indiegogo probably got them around 10,000 or so console owners as a start (assuming 1,000 or so were for non-console packages). Not bad at all, but just a start. Given the handful of delays and other things we saw as time went on, they probably weren't able to make as efficient use of resources to get it out, so who knows how much profit they actually derived when all was said and done. As you imply, perhaps they commissioned an initial run of 15,000 - 20,000, with a certain number allocated for backers and replacements/repairs, and then the remainders going to retailers and Atari's own E-Store inventory.

 

So let's assume that there were at least 10,000 owners out there committed to the VCS at the very start of shipments. What percentage of those bought games on the VCS store? 10%? What percentage of those bought more than one game? Half of that? Those numbers are probably generous, but as we know from past platforms like the Ouya, it can be tough to get people to buy digital content even after an initial rush of enthusiasm for the hardware.

Based on social media, it appears that the most buzz/activity picked up when the console bundles were going for $99 on GameStop, which likely wasn't a net positive in my opinion. Why? I doubt a lot of those $99 owners bought it for the "right" reasons, i.e., they wanted to buy VCS games from the digital store. 

 

I suppose there were also some other curiosities that I didn't quite understand in Atari's scattershot hardware strategy. They released excellent home arcade controllers and even a licensed Raspberry Pi bundle, but it's like those were each their own islands. Perhaps those were license-only deals (certainly the Raspberry Pi thing seems to have been), but it's still fascinating that none of those efforts were in any way related to the VCS, even though things like the arcade controllers would have made an excellent fit for the VCS given the games it comes with. So yeah, I definitely agree with you that it was either, as you say, they expected modest volume and stock and nothing more, or they simply lacked a cohesive vision/plan. It's probably a little of both.

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16 minutes ago, Flojomojo said:

I can only speak for myself, but I “hated” (not really) Fred Chesnais’s Atari because of the obvious exaggerations and lies. There are many examples, but here’s one of the best ones:

 

Shot: https://www.theregister.com/AMP/2018/03/22/atari_lempty_box/

 

Chaser:

https://www.theregister.com/AMP/2018/06/21/atari_interview_in_full/
 

Their crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo was laughably amateurish, exceeded in idiocy only by “Tommy Tallarico’s Intellivision Amico.” Both of the VCS showrunners ended up taking Atari to court for nonpayment of wages. The VCS was late, poorly supported, and lacks many of the promised features. 
 

It’s cool that VCS eventually released and many fans are satisfied with what they got, especially at bargain prices, but it’s not like Atari had flawless execution here. 

 

And no, the story doesn’t say that Atari shipped 2 million units for revenues of €2.3 million. VCS was deeply discounted soon after retail launch, but never as low as €2.3 per console. I swear this kind of gullibility is how we get projects like “Retro VGS,” “Coleco Chameleon,” “Atari VCS,” and “Intellivision Amico” in the first place. THINK!

Aw, that's a classic Atari memory. In addition to THINK I would say take the time to READ and do some rough number crunching or MATH.

 

$2,300,000 ÷ $300 (all in bundle not discounted) = 7667 units.

 

If they sold around 1 million units their revenue to be in the hundreds of millions. They probably at best have sold around 20,000 units with the deep discount. Either way not spectacular numbers.

 

They did do better than Intellivision though! I will give them that.

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2 hours ago, zzip said:

Yeah the old "not the real Atari game",    I would go with 84 too.   Atari's heyday was 1980-1984 and it was never the same after the 1984 sale.

I would say 'the real Atari' became Commodore, and died in 1994.  Commodore became Atari in 1984, and died with the JTS merger.

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People really need to take a chill when it comes to the "death of Atari" or any negative connotations about the company.

 

2022 was probably the best year in like 30 years for the company as far as quality of software titles released.

 

Yes the hardware (VCS), particularly marketing and distribution bugs need to be worked out, but the powers that be at Atari are active listeners and are doing their best to implement a course correction. Many people get lots of joy with their VCS as well as playing new Atari software on other systems. Let it be. Enjoy. Have fun!

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3 hours ago, Flojomojo said:

THINK!

What part of the posting history of these types makes you believe that's occurring?

 

I mean the one universal across all the things you mentioned is this "everyone who is even mildly critical is a terrible human being drinking haterade" as already evidenced....

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4 hours ago, Flojomojo said:

THINK

What part of the posting history of these types makes you believe that's occurring?

 

I mean the one universal across all the things you mentioned is this "everyone who is even mildly positive is a terrible human being drinking koolaid" as already evidenced....

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5 minutes ago, jeremiahjt said:

What part of the posting history of these types makes you believe that's occurring?

 

I mean the one universal across all the things you mentioned is this "everyone who is even mildly positive is a terrible human being drinking koolaid" as already evidenced....

YEAH!!! NO MATTER WHO HAS AN OPINION, PITCHFORKS AND TORCHES FOR ALL!

 

joel mchale pitchfork GIF by NETFLIX

 

Merry Christmas, everyone! (Speaking of the ol' TacoBox, I need to try my controllers via USB to see if my input lag gets fixed that way.)

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3 hours ago, Bill Loguidice said:

The lack of marketing is probably a resource thing. The Indiegogo probably got them around 10,000 or so console owners as a start (assuming 1,000 or so were for non-console packages). Not bad at all, but just a start. Given the handful of delays and other things we saw as time went on, they probably weren't able to make as efficient use of resources to get it out, so who knows how much profit they actually derived when all was said and done. As you imply, perhaps they commissioned an initial run of 15,000 - 20,000, with a certain number allocated for backers and replacements/repairs, and then the remainders going to retailers and Atari's own E-Store inventory.

I don't even recall them doing a cheap social media blitz when it went on sale to the general public, certainly nothing to indicate they have a warehouse full of product and are desperate to move them (other than the Gamestop closeout, but that seemed to be Gamestop's doing)   So I agree they probably had a modest number in reserve.

 

 

 

 

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2 hours ago, zzip said:

How many exclusives did the 5200 have,  or the 7800/Lynx/Jaguar or even the ST?   Good ones?   Ones that sold the system to people who weren't already Atari fans?    It's something Atari hasn't done well since the 2600.    ...   Let's stop pretending it's worthless while putting some of those old consoles on pedestals.   The 5200 was a failure,  was on the market for a shorter period than VCS.  The Jaguar was a failure, also only on market for two years.   Ended up selling for $50 because nobody wanted them.   You wouldn't know it from the way Jag is worshiped today

Ah, dodged the question with an irrelevant argument, just like the good ol' taco days.

 

If you're trying to claim that exclusives don't help then the VCS' failure here isn't a win. The fact of the matter is that all of systems did offer value beyond a logo/brand name and that drove their sales. As best we know, the VCS only sold 10k units, which is pathetic for any gaming product in 2022; Unless Atari says otherwise, that's the number we have to work with. Everything you mentioned crushed the VCS in that regard, even if they all didn't have the best exclusives around. It's still more than what the VCS bothered to offer to the market and the market has clearly shrugged at it and moved on to better things.

 

This is especially true if no name startups can sell more units of their new game console right off the bat like the Playdate, compared to a company with a 50 year legacy and built-in fanbase . 

 

The strategy and business model of the VCS was a disaster and nothing to be victory lapping over. 

 

Quote

No one is expecting VCS to set the world on fire,  it's a console that exists as fan service, not to take on Nintendo, Sony or Steam.

 

Still moving those goal posts I see. Let's take a very quick trip down Atari Marketing Memory lane

 

- The statement that the VCS would be a great product for Netflix moms (millions of customers is not a "niche") that could get them into gaming

- The console motto GAME, STREAM AND CONNECT LIKE NEVER BEFORE that launched in conjunction with the Indiegogo trailer. Watch that initial launch trailer which boasts how great of a streaming system it would be and tell me how that was just aiming at "fan service" instead of trying to position it as a contender within the wildly popular and mainstream streaming world

- Bringing up that at launch time that while it couldn't compete in power with the PS5 that it was still worth buying because it was different. A niche fan service product wouldn't even bring the PS5 up, unless the marketing guy is incompetent. Tie this into some of the VCSers touting eBay scalpers reselling VCS' at inflated prices like was happening with the PS5, implying that the VCS was as hot an item. 

 

The only thing I recall that indicated that Atari designed it for fans was Artz talking about the homebrew community here on AA. But they didn't do anything to foster that, there was no "Atari Game Maker" that came with the system and for the first couple of years any emails sent to "dev@atari.org" just went to a black hole. As far as I see, the old systems still do more by themselves to foster a community than anything the VCS has done.

 

Quote

We don't live back in the day.   

Odd statement coming from a guy who incessantly dredges up the past in his arguments, including up above to dodge a question. You want the old systems to stop being "put up on pedestals" then stop bringing them up.

 

Quote

These days games are virtually identical across all platforms,  they're built from the same codebase. 

 

This is what I said, in different words. 🙄

Quote

Honestly, why would you want a port done the way it was back in the day when those ports were usually inferior?

 

You missed the point by a mile and a half. You brought up Atari's old consoles to gloat that the VCS is better because it had more games released for it. I'm saying it's not an apples-to-apple comparison because the environment was completely different for games development. Unity didn't exist in 1993 where a dev could just check off a box to do a build for the ST then the Jaguar and call it a day but that's basically what it's like for the VCS. Even without that, the sheer number of coders out there dwarfs what existed in the 80s/90s and the libraries and tools that exist are far more advanced. There was no such thing as "make a game without doing any code" back then like you can do now. 

 

Instead of comparing the VCS to consoles from 30/40 years ago, compare it to ones right now. How does it fare up against actual products competing for the same dollars? Looks like it's doing so well, Atari's teetering on bankruptcy again and hoping that NFT scams and blockchain wanking can keep them afloat. Clearly, Chesnais' legacy of screwing the Atari brand continues (I do commend Rosen for trying to fix what he can with a bad situation but the VCS plays into that). I half expect them to go back to setting up gambling machines in the slums of Africa in the next earnings report. 

 

 

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Whether it's 10k or 15k+ plus of lifetime hardware sales, the reality is mainstream consoles often easily sell that number worldwide in a single day. That number is not really what's important, though, I'd argue, as all that matters is at what number a platform can be sustainable. That's why having an online game store didn't make a lot of sense in a sea of things that didn't make a lot of sense if they weren't expecting greater sales. It's one thing not to lose money on hardware sales and to make a little - that's fine and something you have to do if you're not one of the big three - it's another not to have additional guaranteed revenue outside of that. Unfortunately, for the VCS as a platform, 10 - 15k+ would never be enough to sustain sufficient profits given the percentage of console owners that could be counted on to regularly buy digital games and/or additional accessories (likely not much of a factor either in this case). Again, the $99 thing probably hurt much more than it normally would have because I doubt those new owners moved the needle in any appreciable way for game sales.

 

Now, I certainly don't know the economics of their game store. It could be relatively modest maintenance costs (especially with the low number of users) and relatively easy to vette and certify games (requiring just a handful of QA staff, I suppose). If that's the case, then perhaps it can stay up indefinitely as long as it doesn't start to lose money. If it does, it would only make sense for Atari to shut it down, since they're at the stage now where they're trying to curb major losses in their hardware division.

 

As mentioned by others, I can't explain the lack of Atari themselves doing so little on social media and other places about their VCS platform. That's technically "free" because they have a social media presence anyway. The only way that makes sense is going back to the idea that they only expected to sell what they produced and leave it at that, but that's where I have a problem with the game store thing, unless of course it's that modest maintenance cost. Hopefully one day we'll get a good post mortem on all of this, though I suppose the Amico takes precedent at this point in that area.

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2 hours ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

Still moving those goal posts I see. Let's take a very quick trip down Atari Marketing Memory lane

 

- The statement that the VCS would be a great product for Netflix moms (millions of customers is not a "niche") that could get them into gaming

- The console motto GAME, STREAM AND CONNECT LIKE NEVER BEFORE that launched in conjunction with the Indiegogo trailer. Watch that initial launch trailer which boasts how great of a streaming system it would be and tell me how that was just aiming at "fan service" instead of trying to position it as a contender within the wildly popular and mainstream streaming world

- Bringing up that at launch time that while it couldn't compete in power with the PS5 that it was still worth buying because it was different. A niche fan service product wouldn't even bring the PS5 up, unless the marketing guy is incompetent. Tie this into some of the VCSers touting eBay scalpers reselling VCS' at inflated prices like was happening with the PS5, implying that the VCS was as hot an item. 

These were never my arguments.  I don't work for Atari Marketing.  I liked it for the possibilities of PC mode in a cool Atari case.    That was my sole selling point.   It was the perfect small device to run my retro games on in the living room.   I always said I didn't expect Atari to release much of interest in the Atari Store.   However what Atari has done is release a bunch of "Recharged" games along with some mostly quality games that get lost in the shuffle on Steam.   Is there a lot of exclusives?   No but I never expected there to be.   If Atari couldn't get their exclusive game together when they had resources and market share, why would we expect them to be able to now?

 

Now was Atari's messaging unclear around this?   Sure.   It does have a bunch of streaming apps though so that isn't exactly a lie.   But I don't really think that's really what people were looking for, seeing how Stadia turned out.

 

4 hours ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

Odd statement coming from a guy who incessantly dredges up the past in his arguments, including up above to dodge a question. You want the old systems to stop being "put up on pedestals" then stop bringing them up.

Well It's an Atari board and we talk about the old systems here.    If you really follow my arguments that closely, you know I'm pretty critical on most of Atari's consoles.  

 

4 hours ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:
Quote

These days games are virtually identical across all platforms,  they're built from the same codebase. 

 

This is what I said, in different words. 🙄

So we agree.   Then why did you frame it as a criticism when that's how things are done today?

 

4 hours ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

You missed the point by a mile and a half. You brought up Atari's old consoles to gloat that the VCS is better because it had more games released for it.

Not really gloating. 75 or so games on the VCS is far from a large library.  But some of the old Atari consoles fared even worse (not counting homebrew)   I just thought it was an interesting point

 

4 hours ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

I'm saying it's not an apples-to-apple comparison because the environment was completely different for games development. Unity didn't exist in 1993 where a dev could just check off a box to do a build for the ST then the Jaguar and call it a day but that's basically what it's like for the VCS. Even without that, the sheer number of coders out there dwarfs what existed in the 80s/90s and the libraries and tools that exist are far more advanced. There was no such thing as "make a game without doing any code" back then like you can do now. 

I don't disagree.    But this is why I don't understand why some critics seem to wish Atari had done a closed proprietary system with custom hardware instead.  Like the bad old days..    You'd be completely at the mercy of a tiny pool of software developers writing specific software for it, and when Atari pulls the plug, it's a paperweight.    That's why I could never get behind something like Amico or Playdate.   I don't want that.

 

4 hours ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

Instead of comparing the VCS to consoles from 30/40 years ago, compare it to ones right now. How does it fare up against actual products competing for the same dollars? 

Everybody knows Atari can't compete with Playstation, Nintendo or Microsoft.    When Sony sells 120 million consoles (and Atari sells in the tens of thousands by most estimates,   they don't even have the same economies of scale.   Atari simply can't produce a machine as powerful as PS5 for the same money.   Sony is likely losing money on PS5 hardware.    But Atari never positioned it as competition to this market.   Most of the fans aren't claiming it is either.   Only the critics bring it up as a strawman argument.   It exists as fan service.  Whether or not Atari calls it that doesn't matter.   That's what it is in reality. 

 

 For me it compliments the PS5.   PS5 plays all the modern games, and I loaded the VCS with all my classic games up through WiI.   It's perfect, I don't have to maintain a bunch of old console hardware.

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2 hours ago, Bill Loguidice said:

As mentioned by others, I can't explain the lack of Atari themselves doing so little on social media and other places about their VCS platform. That's technically "free" because they have a social media presence anyway. The only way that makes sense is going back to the idea that they only expected to sell what they produced and leave it at that, but that's where I have a problem with the game store thing, unless of course it's that modest maintenance cost. Hopefully one day we'll get a good post mortem on all of this, though I suppose the Amico takes precedent at this point in that area.

I never liked the private game store thing either.  

 

What I would have liked to see instead is something like "Atari Store (powered by Steam)".   Atari would curate content that is certified to work 100% with the game controllers (no kb/mouse input required) and within VCS specs.   This content would be featured when users logged in.  users are free to install non-certified content at their own risk.  Interface would be Steam big picture mode rethemed with Atari branding.   Of course this depends on Valve being willing to cooperate and maybe they wouldn't.

 

Sure Atari would get a bigger cut from their own store, but I doubt it's doing better than breaking even

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There is no way Atari has sold one million VCS units, and honestly that article is quite low quality, so probably not worth worrying about. The best guesstimate from the forums here seems at least a possible ballpark, and that was maybe earlier this year at about 20-25K units. There have definitely been a bunch of sales since then, I'd guess (just a guess) based on a big influx of new buyers to the VCS Discord and the hype around Atari 50th/Black Friday/Holiday Sales we're looking to at least a few more thousand units sold since then. 

 

The article seems to forget that their revenue document for Hardware was more than the VCS, and also included at least Atari XP along with anything else Hardware-related they put into that pool. 

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I think the number sold ultimately doesn't matter, except for pissing contests in comparison to other systems and, more seriously, revenue to warrant keeping the servers and store online.

 

I do think they need to re-pivot their approach, as even the more ardent supporters of the console admit the US-only approach is a bit short-sighted. (I wholeheartedly agree, and seeing an EU distribution would really help, both with sales numbers and growing customer support for it.)

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2 hours ago, zzip said:

These were never my arguments.  I don't work for Atari Marketing.  I liked it for the possibilities of PC mode in a cool Atari case.    That was my sole selling point.   It was the perfect small device to run my retro games on in the living room.   I always said I didn't expect Atari to release much of interest in the Atari Store.   However what Atari has done is release a bunch of "Recharged" games along with some mostly quality games that get lost in the shuffle on Steam.   Is there a lot of exclusives?   No but I never expected there to be.   If Atari couldn't get their exclusive game together when they had resources and market share, why would we expect them to be able to now?

 

Your argument was that it's a niche console and that "no one" thought otherwise. Atari marketing thought otherwise as how they promoted the machine - they also regularly were posting self-congratulatory "ATARI IS BACK" articles over and over. Sure you need some hubris in marketing but there's a line you can cross where it becomes tone deaf; Ultimately Atari's way of how they handled the machine is what matters to the VCS and its expectations, not what a couple of guys arguing on a forum think.

 

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Well It's an Atari board and we talk about the old systems here.    If you really follow my arguments that closely, you know I'm pretty critical on most of Atari's consoles.  

It's fine to be critical but when you bring up an irrelevant point to the conversation or argument then you shouldn't be surprised for getting called out on it.

 

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So we agree.   Then why did you frame it as a criticism when that's how things are done today?

 

We agreed on one thing, but you're ignoring the rest and obfuscating so forget it. I have better things to do than chase my tail. 

 

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Not really gloating. 75 or so games on the VCS is far from a large library.  But some of the old Atari consoles fared even worse (not counting homebrew)   I just thought it was an interesting point

 

I don't disagree.    But this is why I don't understand why some critics seem to wish Atari had done a closed proprietary system with custom hardware instead.  Like the bad old days..    You'd be completely at the mercy of a tiny pool of software developers writing specific software for it, and when Atari pulls the plug, it's a paperweight.    That's why I could never get behind something like Amico or Playdate.   I don't want that.

What you want and what the wider market wants are two different things and for the success of not just the VCS but of the company, the latter is what matters. 

 

 Proprietary closed systems are working out pretty well for the Switch; Amico never launched so we won't know how it would've fared but on the smaller company scale the Playdate is doing well going into next year from the sounds of it, while again, Atari is facing losses. They are blaming those losses on the VCS. Seems obvious to me who had the better idea here. In Atari's case though, I've long argued that the VCS was pointless and they would be better off right now if they had just done a Flashback 11 or whatever number they were at instead of trying to compete in a space they were woefully unable to compete in. 

 

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As mentioned by others, I can't explain the lack of Atari themselves doing so little on social media and other places about their VCS platform. That's technically "free" because they have a social media presence anyway. The only way that makes sense is going back to the idea that they only expected to sell what they produced and leave it at that, but that's where I have a problem with the game store thing, unless of course it's that modest maintenance cost. Hopefully one day we'll get a good post mortem on all of this, though I suppose the Amico takes precedent at this point in that area.

The oddest thing to me in Atari's marketing was when they would announce a new game - be it Food Fight or Akka Arrh - they would not be touting the VCS front and center, it was more of an afterthought. Even in the press releases, it was the last platform mentioned. If you have a platform, promote it any chance eyeballs will be looking at the news but from Artz to whomever is controlling the marketing now, it's like they are ashamed to mention it.

Edited by Shaggy the Atarian
added quote from Bill
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55 minutes ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

The oddest thing to me in Atari's marketing was when they would announce a new game - be it Food Fight or Akka Arrh - they would not be touting the VCS front and center, it was more of an afterthought. Even in the press releases, it was the last platform mentioned. If you have a platform, promote it any chance eyeballs will be looking at the news but from Artz to whomever is controlling the marketing now, it's like they are ashamed to mention it.

Exactly. There HAS to be something to the haphazard marketing for anything related to the VCS. Sometimes Atari would "remember" to send an email about it or mention it amongst the other platforms with new games, but it was rarely front and center post crowdfunding. While it's no doubt true that Atari earned more money from any and all of the other platforms over the VCS versions of these games, I agree with you that it's still odd that they didn't try to promote their own platform more (it's not like it would affect sales on the other platforms). It can't be as simple as marketing incompetence, as that's at too basic of a level, but I guess you never know. There just never seemed to be any real confidence or enthusiasm from Atari after the crowdfunding, which is a bit strange given, as we know, there were occasional and very sporadic times when they did. It's the inconsistency that's the most perplexing.

 

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 Proprietary closed systems are working out pretty well for the Switch; Amico never launched so we won't know how it would've fared but on the smaller company scale the Playdate is doing well going into next year from the sounds of it, while again, Atari is facing losses. They are blaming those losses on the VCS. Seems obvious to me who had the better idea here. In Atari's case though, I've long argued that the VCS was pointless and they would be better off right now if they had just done a Flashback 11 or whatever number they were at instead of trying to compete in a space they were woefully unable to compete in. 

The Playdate is definitely a unique example. For no obvious reason, other than the crank gimmick seemed to tickle a lot of people's fancy, it caught on. As I've mentioned in the dedicated Playdate thread on here, I think this is another Ouya in that it had explosive initial success, but I don't see that sustaining itself once it's actually in people's hands (and I think the relative silence after a decent percentage of people got one in their hands speaks volumes). Novelty factors get old fast and I think there are too many self-imposed technological limitations (like no backlight) that will frustrate a lot of people in practice. There could be another dozen Playdate-like projects out there before another one gets anywhere near the buzz the Playdate inexplicably picked up. That's the luck of the draw.

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3 hours ago, Cebus Capucinis said:

I think the number sold ultimately doesn't matter, except for pissing contests in comparison to other systems and, more seriously, revenue to warrant keeping the servers and store online.

 

I do think they need to re-pivot their approach, as even the more ardent supporters of the console admit the US-only approach is a bit short-sighted. (I wholeheartedly agree, and seeing an EU distribution would really help, both with sales numbers and growing customer support for it.)

Seriously, after this amount of time to not get them to non-USA... like that is where a huge amount of homebrewers for the Atari scene is!  I mean Atari should be getting ahold of all the homebrew coders from over the years and get VCS releases made!

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The whole "real Atari" thing is like saying "My favorite SNL is whenever I was in my prime and all the others suck!", it's all objective to different people.

 

It's a fact that Atari had so many various ownership changes that their history is not as consistent as Nintendo or Sega and that's what these gaming journos love to harp on w/o doing any historical research.

 

I've learn to just enjoy whatever incarnation Atari has at the time because pining for the old ol' days would just make me more depressed.  Yes the VCS marketing was a complete botch job since it was first announced but at least someone at nuAtari was able to make really good games like the Recharge series.  And that's the Atari I currently like and they can be more even if people use Switches or Steam Decks as a "VCS"...because in the end it's all about the games.

 

15 hours ago, leech said:

I would say 'the real Atari' became Commodore, and died in 1994.  Commodore became Atari in 1984, and died with the JTS merger.

 

It's true although I did like using the Tramiel era computers like the ST & XE...but the overall marketing in the States was so terrible.

 

Now repeat after me, "Marketing is Everything"

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