Is this the year for the Atari VCS

[Dadisajoke]

After being stuck in a huge line at Costco, this popped into my head.

 

https://dadisajoke.com/blog/f/the-atari-vcs-is-trending

[Mockduck]

In some ways 2022 was a big year for the VCS, end of the year saw a bunch of sales of the console, who knows how many but a few thousand at least seems likely and maybe quite a bit more. The VCS had a really great games year in 2022 as well. Hard to say what 2023 will bring; I expect some good to great Atari games at least, maybe a dozen or more, along with a scattering of third parties, and we'll see how well recent buyers convert to longer term users. The issues the VCS is having with initial setup, from the BIOS password issue preventing people from doing many, many things on the PC side to the need to roll back the stock AtariOS update then flash it forward in order to access AtariOS at the start, probably drives some % of these folks away. But if they stick around and join the community it could be the VCS' biggest year yet. 

[+swlovinist]

The road ahead for the Atari VCS is a challenging one.   2022 was a good year mixed with some great games content and hardware sales.   2023 will need to have scheduled releases ahead of time announced and regularly released games.   So far there has not been a single game released in 2023, something that did happen last year too in which there were weeks/month of content drought.   I would like to see Atari work on this if they can.    As Mockduck mentioned above, the initial setup is challenging for people to jump in to the console.  I would just be happy to see Atari still releasing games this year and will continue to support them.  

[Mockduck]

Felt worth mentioning, though, that if you aren't messing with the internal hardware of the VCS and using a PC on a stick, USB with Windows/Linux/whatever, the VCS PC side largely just works. It's when you want to mess with hardware, RAM for example, or install an M.2 drive, that things get difficult. 

 

I'd like to see Atari figure out its initial OS issue if possible as a priority in 2023, otherwise just keep releasing games and I'm good. I feel like the current AtariOS library is one of the VCS' strong points, it's a great list of games, and even if you could have played them on the PC side, did you? Or did it get lost in the constant rush of games releases. Atari has a good case to make that even if sales are low in number, there are actual people who will see and play your game, and there are a ton of developers out there would would love to be in that position. Can also be a great way to get live feedback as it were are you are going through your release platform work. I feel like the Playstation Vita saw some of that as well back in the day.

 

I feel like it's possible we won't get an official Atari game until after Akka Arrh is released, which is currently listed as "February". Hopefully there could be a few third party releases.

[Atari_JaguarVCS]

I’m hopeful this year will be the best year for the VCS. I think we will see a decent amount of quality games in the coming months, there’s a few 3rd party game releases coming up that I’m really excited about and they could potentially help drive more sales of the VCS, Project Orbit and End’s Reach which are both shaping up nicely and I’m sure these games are also timed exclusives on the VCS too. I know there’s other 3rd party games in development and then those games coming from Atari so for a console that’s dead or struggling it seems to have lots of games heading it’s way with Atari also encouraging devs to get on board in the background. I rather like the current VCS library as there’s games I’d simply have passed by if I seen them on other platform’s but due to the limited size of the VCS game library and wanting to support the device I’ve picked said games up and had an absolute blast playing them. I would actually prefer the VCS library to remain quite small only offering quality game releases, quality of quantity, none of the shovelware that hits other platforms. 

[Flyindrew]

A year from now I see the VCS in the exact same spot its in today. Unless Atari does some serious marketing, I dont see the console catching on beyond its dedicated user base. At the same point in time, I dont see the console "dying" this year either. Just as in 2022, I think we are going to see some quality releases for the VCS. Just hope enough people support them.

[Atari_JaguarVCS]

I think if Atari wanted to get super serious about the VCS they would just find a way to release it outside of the states with a new manufacturing partner and I’m pretty sure it would thrive and actually do well, it’s been gather a decent following as of late if the Discord server is anything to go by. Since Atari really markets the VCS as a mini PC I don’t think they’ve ever been to serious in it. When Atari do drop support for it an no longer release games and 3rd party software devs do the same I’d be willing to bet the community will carry on maintaining the Atari OS with updates and we will see homebrew releases and ports show up for download in the store, similar to the state of the Ouya today. I guess the good thing about the VCS is it’s just a PC and it’s open to install your OS and enjoy, the VCS has a serious amount of games available for it just load up Steam and enjoy all the retro and indie games on there. I don’t think it can fail as a console realistically as its really is just a mini PC the only thing that can drop off is the Atari OS side. 

[zzip]

Hopefully they bring the rumored "homebrew" feature,   which will allow the community to package all sorts of games to the Atari interface without forcing users to PC mode.