What is this?

[+DjayBee]

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/atari-acquires-atariage

 

[Overange]

[Beeblebrox]

"By bringing AtariAge into the Atari family, we can ensure this important resource gets the support it needs to continue to fulfill its mission for years to come."

[Rybags]

Recent thread with the news

 

 

[_The Doctor__]

We are the product.

[+DjayBee]

8 minutes ago, Rybags said:

Recent thread with the news

 

Thanks, I had checked the home page but not other forums and was not sure if the information was true.

[Beeblebrox]

All hail our new Atari overloads!!!

 

[+DrVenkman]

This … makes me sad. 

[+scorpio_ny]

Omg! The rumors were true!!

[Overange]

To be honest, Atari could well give us access to cool stuff.

 

They could open a portal to access Atari.com via the FUJINET.

 

They may still have access to a lot of unreleased documentation etc, that could mean they start reproducing spare parts for the old systems.

 

Lets see what they are going to bring to the community

[+DrVenkman]

5 minutes ago, Overange said:

They may still have access to a lot of unreleased documentation etc, that could mean they start reproducing spare parts for the old systems.

They don’t. All that stuff that still exists has already been found and released decades ago by the likes of the late Curt Vendel’s literal dumpster-diving after Atari Corp. ceased to exist, plus the tireless efforts of hundreds if not thousands of individual collectors and digital historians.

 

[+DjayBee]

Or they still lie in the now inaccessible vaults of Curt.

[Overange]

10 minutes ago, DrVenkman said:

They don’t. All that stuff that still exists has already been found and released decades ago by the likes of the late Curt Vendel’s literal dumpster-diving after Atari Corp. ceased to exist, plus the tireless efforts of hundreds if not thousands of individual collectors and digital historians.

 

That's my point, ' They may still have access ' whether it be via the new owners of the late Curt Vendels collection and hopefully, maybe get to recover his lost passwords. 

[reifsnyderb]

I wonder how this will affect developers of retro hardware....

[+DrVenkman]

14 minutes ago, Overange said:

That's my point, ' They may still have access ' whether it be via the new owners of the late Curt Vendels collection and hopefully, maybe get to recover his lost passwords. 

They don’t. Curt’s collection was a mix of stuff. That which he owned went to his estate and likely passed to his wife and daughter. Some of the rest had been loaned to him by other long-time collectors and historians, some of his stuff had in turn been loaned out to others. His business partner Marty was involved in trying to help Curt’s wife sort it all out.

 

But in any case, even if the current company that calls itself “Atari” has actually acquired Curt’s collection entire (*), there is no way they are going to spend the millions it would take to digitize large format chip fabrication film negatives, reverse-engineer and correct any errors in the digitization process, convert the NMOS production processes to modern CMOS and have more chips fabbed. They are not going to spend tens of thousands of dollars to make new injection molds for all the old consoles and variations to sell new plastics. They aren’t going to make up new 800 keyboards to replace the broken Stackpole plunger housings. They aren’t gong to sell 1200XL keyboard membranes.

 

They are going to do exactly what they have been doing: make repros of 2600 commons; sell little emulation boxes like the 2600+ and commission “recharged” games based on old IP for modern platforms.

 

Believing anything else is delusional.

 

(*) There is ZERO indication that this has or will actually happen. It’s pure speculation on your part, and how internet rumors get spread. 

[+scorpio_ny]

4 minutes ago, DrVenkman said:

They don’t. Curt’s collection was a mix of stuff. That which he owned went to his estate and likely passed to his wife and daughter. Some of the rest had been loaned to him by other long-time collectors and historians, some of his stuff had in turn been loaned out to others. His business partner Marty was involved in trying to help Curt’s wife sort it all out.

 

But in any case, even if the current company that calls itself “Atari” has actually acquired Curt’s collection entire (*), there is no way they are going to spend the millions it would take to digitize large format chip fabrication film negatives, reverse-engineer and correct any errors in the digitization process, convert the NMOS production processes to modern CMOS and have more chips TIA or POKEY chips fabbed. They are not going to spend tens of thousands of dollars to make new injection molds for all the old consoles and variations to sell new plastics. They aren’t going to make up new 800 keyboards to replace the broken Stackpole plunger housings. They aren’t gong to sell 1200XL keyboard membrane.

 

They are going to do exactly what they have been doing: make repros of 2600 commons; sell little emulation boxes like the 2600+ and commission “recharged” games based on old IP for modern platforms.

 

Believing anything else is delusional.

 

(*) There is ZERO indication that this has or will actually happen. It’s pure speculation on your part, and how internet rumors get spread. 

All this is most likely correct. They are not going to work maintaining or updating the old hardware. We may not see a new fab for old chips, but I would love to see maybe a FPGA recreation of the Atari 8 bit with support for most of the old hardware and software with new modern capabilities on top of it. With some aesthetics based on a past product. With input directly from the enthusiasts for this new potential product and an embrace of the homebrew community with the tools and knowledge so they can develop on it. All officially supported. 

 

Only time will tell how things go.

[+Stephen]

Why would anyone think they will put in the work to release stuff for the computers when all they have done so far is continue to rehash old hardware in the cheapest possible way?  The new 2600+ is nothing more than a Retron 77, an emulation box that dumps some ROMs and plays them. 

[+Fred_M]

And do know that Atari did not develop the coming 2600+. It is made by German/Austrian company Plaion, formerly known as Koch media.

 

https://press.kochmedia.com/AN-ICON-RETURNS-ATARI-AND-PLAION-ANNOUNCE-FAITHFUL-RECREATION-OF-THE-A

 

All those recreations of Atari "consoles" are made by other companies like Blaze, Atgames, Myarcade, Jakks Pacific and so on. Atari just sells them the license to make them.

Edited September 7, 2023 by Fred_M

[Houdini]

9 hours ago, _The Doctor__ said:

We are the product.

And if I know corporate, they WILL find some way to sell us to someone...

[+gnusto]

It appears there is no area of interest so obscure that capitalism can suffer without commercializing it.

I appreciate the effort that Albert has made over the years in running the board. I also appreciate the enormous cumulative effort that the community has put in; the collection of esoteric and hard won knowledge in so many different areas. It is truly a unique and interesting corpus, driven together by nothing other than a mutual admiration of the old systems. I can't see it being the same going forward. Will folks like mytek want to post a design that even in an abstract way is monetized by someone else? Will Farb, or Djaybee with his cracks, want to complete the collection of a8preservation under the watchful eye of a company? Will Phaeron still want to keep this as the home of arguably the best 8-bit system emulator that exists, donate his own time for someone else's commercial benefit?

On the surface it would appear the potential for negatives to the community far outweigh the chance of benefits. Companies are rarely known to be the benign and supportive backing to a community.

[kenp]

What a shame.  I'd just found my way here in the last few months.  Now that it's been taken over by what looks to be the owner of the trademarked goods and historical hardware, I'll be waiting to hear that they pulled a Paramount Studios (who lock out fans from using any Star Trek related material) and lock everything down ruining all the work that everyone's put into the platform here over the years.  I guess if it gets really bad here a new platform for support can start up and then try to survive against the Capitalist Demons for a while again.

[+Stephen]

4 hours ago, gnusto said:

It appears there is no area of interest so obscure that capitalism can suffer without commercializing it.

I appreciate the effort that Albert has made over the years in running the board. I also appreciate the enormous cumulative effort that the community has put in; the collection of esoteric and hard won knowledge in so many different areas. It is truly a unique and interesting corpus, driven together by nothing other than a mutual admiration of the old systems. I can't see it being the same going forward. Will folks like mytek want to post a design that even in an abstract way is monetized by someone else? Will Farb, or Djaybee with his cracks, want to complete the collection of a8preservation under the watchful eye of a company? Will Phaeron still want to keep this as the home of arguably the best 8-bit system emulator that exists, donate his own time for someone else's commercial benefit?

On the surface it would appear the potential for negatives to the community far outweigh the chance of benefits. Companies are rarely known to be the benign and supportive backing to a community.

This.  I am trying to be positive, but after being a member since the forum was a whopping 5 months old, I truly fear this is the death knell.  I'd love to be proven wrong, but can guarantee I won't.

[greggj]

lawyers on standby 

[Geister]

I'd like to think that Atari could see this as an opportunity to fund a resource for the benefit of the community, but as Google lied in a hopeful voice, "Don't be evil".  We saw how that went. 

 

I guess we have to watch the user agreement for this site to see if they ever add a clause saying that anything posted to this site becomes the exclusive property of Atari.  If that happens, immediately stop posting anything new to the forums and be prepared for a class action lawsuit to maintain ownership of anything that pre-dated the update to the user agreement.

 

Let's hope for the former and not the latter.

[+slx]

My biggest concern would be a bankruptcy or a turn in corporate policy that results in a shutdown of the forum and loss of the accumulated Atari wisdom stored here. I'll take the well-made "Atari 50" as a good omen that the latter is not so likely to happen in the near future and for the former, I do hope for some backup to end up at archive.org.