How do others here feel about this? (Atari XP cash grab)

[Room 34]

OK, I'm showing my hand with that parenthetical aside in the thread title.

 

I've barely been around here in… yikes… decades at this point, so I apologize for storming in with this rant. (I'm still into retro gaming, but mostly Nintendo stuff from the SNES/GameCube/GBA systems these days.)

 

Anyway… I just stumbled upon this stuff the company that currently calls itself Atari is producing:

 

https://atari.com/products/atari-50-limited-edition-complete-set-of-10

 

Ugh. OK, aesthetically I do find it somewhat appealing, but in all other respects it just seems like a gross cash grab. $1000 for stylized recreations of old Atari games? Really? Granted, a big part of what bugs me is the whole idea of a company that has nothing to do with the original Atari Corporation, buying the IP rights and then churning out stuff like this. Atari is dead. Let the community have it.

[HammR25]

I find it weird.  They made less than 10K on this.  That's probably why they couldn't be bothered to get some actual product to take pictures of.

[Creamhoven]

I find it outragous. Exploiting the nostaligia and good memories of classic gamers for a quick cash grab, it's disgusting. If you are profiting of something that brings nothing new to a table by demanding obscene prices, you should ask yourself what good do you bring into this world. There shouldnt be space for this.

[delmero]

Good evening

 

I've posted about these "refurbished" games in fancy boxes in the wrong forum here sometime ago, I think @Room 34 is right in this.

 

As long there are people that buy this kind of product the ones doing it won't stop producing these "modern" Atari game series.

 

When I saw this on a newsletter somewhere else, I went to eBay and guess what the games were selling at triple or cuadruple 

the original asking price.

 

D.

 

 

 

 

[akator]

I initially thought this was an April Fools' Day joke.  That it's a real product is even more amusing.

[fiddlepaddle]

Anyone who knows about this is paying too much attention to the wrong things.

[+x=usr(1536)]

If it's a cash grab, $100,000 in sales isn't going to get them very far.

[Cebus Capucinis]

I think it's absolutely worth it.....

 

....if I use someone else's money. Anyone wanna give me $1,000?

[Bomberman94]

I do not feel anything… because there is obviously no PAL release planned and they ignored questions about this 😒

[zzip]

To me it's simple.   It's not worth the money, so I don't buy it.

 

I don't know how many buy limited edition stuff like this because of fear of missing out vs expecting the value to appreciate in the future.   But as long as people will buy stuff like it, it will continue to get produced.

 

 

[Keatah]

It's extraordinarily rare that I buy limited edition stuff. FOMO be damned. Tis' all part of a rat race and busy-making.

 

In speaking of this specifically, not interested beyond what they did. And of course gawking at how much it costs. I don't like the styling either - it's not nostalgic. And nostalgia and sentimentality a huge part of retrogames.

 

Or put it this way. I could get this and put it on my self. Is it going to change my status in the family/community? Likely not.

[+GoldLeader]

 

You don't want to know my opinion of this version of "atari".   This is a Family show.

[turbo graphics 220]

I think its good. Selling premium stuff for the hardcore rather than lets face it, stuff like the atari flashback which usually ends ups in the garbage 2 weeks after christmas. They are technically real official atari games. If Nintendo and Sega did the same thing for the nes and sms they would sell out too. I can't buy them anyway because they don't ship outside of America and I'd probably have to pay import taxes. Yes its a cashgrab but its the type of cashgrab that appeals to me.

[+Stephen]

As a fan (and longtime spender since 82), it basically feels like this.

 

For those that cannot connect A to B.  Atari is the dog, and I am the grass.  I am being SHAT upon.

[Matt_B]

It ain't for me either, but it's not so offensive to my sensibilities as some of the other shady get-rich-quick schemes pulled in the name of Atari in recent years. At least this only requires them to find a hundred mugs, who don't need to be particularly rich, rather than billionaire hoteliers or crypto speculators.

 

Atari can have my money for releasing games that I want to play at reasonable prices, and that's about it really.

[Keatah]

I don't like this haughtytaughty upscale shit they're making. It isn't for me. It isn't for anyone I know.

 

It would be s'cool to make an original VCS with original cartridges. Shit'd sell like hotcakes 2bshur. And modern kids would love it!

[Asaki]

Quote

Collectible cartridges for rare and never released Atari® games

Okay, I'm confused...am I the only one not seeing "rare and never released" games on that page?
Maybe the page is broken on Firefox, because I only see commons.

Edited April 12, 2023 by Asaki

[Crazy Climber]

I'm going to be honest here and go against the grain...I think they're kinda neat looking.

 

The cartridge design is sick and the fact they "light up" when plugged in is just the kind of pointless nonsense I love in my collection.

 

They lost me on having to buy the complete set though. If I could have just bought Yars revenge or maybe missile command at $100 for some "shelf swag" I probably would have bitten. Dropping $1000 for 10 of the same gimmick simultaneously though has no appeal to me. It's a big investment and a lot of shelf space for something I really only want one of...

[Keatah]

Post-pandemic corporations are into marketing less-affordable, full-tilt, loaded, stuff. The lower budget, stripped down stuff doesn't have a high enough profit margin. This applies to cars and cartridges equally. And it is so because it's less effort, less expenditure, and more profitable, for a company to make 50 deluxe widgets than 500 basic widgets.

Edited April 12, 2023 by Keatah

[Crazy Climber]

1 minute ago, Keatah said:

Post-pandemic corporations are into marketing less-affordable, full-tilt, loaded, stuff. The lower budget, less stripped down stuff doesn't have a high enough profit margin. This applies to cars and cartridges equally. And it is so because it's less effort, less expenditure, and more profitable, for a company to make 50 deluxe widgets than 500 basic widgets.

Yeah, definitely safer...

 

I mean you could probably sell quite a few Adventure, Centipede, Yars Revenge, etc but what about Super Breakout and Haunted House?

 

I totally get it, but that was also my reason for declining.

[zzip]

They sold out,  so obviously a market existed for it.   The fact they were able to sell out means they didn't produce enough for demand or could have gotten away with charging more.

 

I have a hard time understanding the issue.   It's not like we can't get those games for much cheaper.   Most of us probably own them already.   This is purely a collectors item.   If you have a name like Atari and can sell high-priced collectibles, why wouldn't you?   Most companies couldn't do that.    And it's not like Atari is only catering to collectors market, so it isn't hurting us.

 

[Keatah]

I get that. It's not affecting me in any way except forcing me to waste time typing about it. One thing for sure is that these will be up on ebay (and actually selling) for thousands more $$$ in time.

 

But for now it still has the air of unnecessary decadance, a kind of gaudiness, to me. Promotes frivolous thinking inside the brain. Like how does this improve one's life by having it on your gaming shelf..?

 

IMHO a proper shrine to the first early games are the original games themselves. The original code running on original hardware in an original cartridge, with original instructions and box at the ready. For those of us that have moved beyond that, to the next level, it would consist of scans, images, and the original roms running on an accurate emulator. The plus side of this is that none of it degrades over the decades. Colors, clarity, saturation, all are rock solid. Both the game itself and the documentation scans. That's real preservation right there! (just had to get emulators involved somehow)

[zzip]

15 hours ago, Keatah said:

But for now it still has the air of unnecessary decadance, a kind of gaudiness, to me. Promotes frivolous thinking inside the brain. Like how does this improve one's life by having it on your gaming shelf..?

 

Someone else's issue to deal with, I suppose?   I just don't have a collectors mindset.   The only thing I collect is dust

 

[MrMaddog]

 

Atari SA (*) has been doing this for a while and no surprise it's a huge loss for the company along with their crypto-schemes.

 

What's sad is they were trying to get the same retrogaming collectors who spend hundreds of dollars on "rare" physical 8-bit/16-bit carts...always gonna be people who have more money than brains buy into this stuff.

 

(*) - Thank goodness Atari is now under new and hopefully sainer management...