When Support Completely Ends for VCS…

[YarsFan]

…Atari will surely allow users to keep playing the games they bought on VCS rather than essentially turning the VCS into a brick by shutting off the ability to login to the system, right? Surely they would not contribute to environmental degradation by bricking the whole system by shutting down the cloud, not enabling people to login and play the games they bought indefinitely?

 

It would seem most prudent they announce beforehand that support ends in 6-12 months, and do one final system update where the system automatically boots up as-is with no login/Internet required, and you can access whatever games you already bought/saved on it (thereby contributing positively to preservation of historical games, and preservation of the environment). 
 

Other thoughts on the matter?

[Atari_JaguarVCS]

I can currently login and play the games i own on the Atari VCS 800 perfectly fine without an internet connection? In terms of support ending for the console well there's always PC mode so you can use Steam and the Epic store etc so the console will always have games available to it and I'm sure Davpa would be the first to notify the community when the Atari OS side of things hits end of life cause really this is a mini Ryzen PC so it can't die, given the fact there's quite a lot of games currently in development for the Atari VCS and i heard somewhere Davpa had recently sent out a bunch of new dev kits to developers thing's are still looking fairly decent for a niche console that's only available to buy from the states. I would also like to add in that there's new features in development for the Atari VCS so when the next firmware update hits it'll be more quality of life added to it yet again. It's a bit pointless worrying about when support will end, it is what it is when it happens. 

[+bent_pin]

[+Neon Wraith]

43 minutes ago, YarsFan said:

…Atari will surely allow users to keep playing the games they bought on VCS rather than essentially turning the VCS into a brick by shutting off the ability to login to the system, right? Surely they would not contribute to environmental degradation by bricking the whole system by shutting down the cloud, not enabling people to login and play the games they bought indefinitely?

 

It would seem most prudent they announce beforehand that support ends in 6-12 months, and do one final system update where the system automatically boots up as-is with no login/Internet required, and you can access whatever games you already bought/saved on it (thereby contributing positively to preservation of historical games, and preservation of the environment). 
 

Other thoughts on the matter?

Dude, what is your obsession with the end of the VCS?  You're posting this crap in every thread in here.  It ends when it ends...

[+bent_pin]

[Mockduck]

You can log into the VCS fine without an Internet connection. But I would be shocked if we got six months heads up, it'll probably be a slow trickle to nothing when it does happen. Should be basically fine though even if it is sad.

[leech]

23 hours ago, YarsFan said:

…Atari will surely allow users to keep playing the games they bought on VCS rather than essentially turning the VCS into a brick by shutting off the ability to login to the system, right? Surely they would not contribute to environmental degradation by bricking the whole system by shutting down the cloud, not enabling people to login and play the games they bought indefinitely?

 

It would seem most prudent they announce beforehand that support ends in 6-12 months, and do one final system update where the system automatically boots up as-is with no login/Internet required, and you can access whatever games you already bought/saved on it (thereby contributing positively to preservation of historical games, and preservation of the environment). 
 

Other thoughts on the matter?

You do realize that (as others have said) you don't need to be online to log into it.  And also, the games are DRM free?  I've tested this with a few games, I can boot into the Linux side of my install, and launch the games installed from AtariOS.  I've even copied one to a USB stick and played it on my Linux Desktop system running Debian Sid.  At this stage, the only thing Atari could 'end' is support for the VCS and take down the store so you're unable to buy new games.  And even then, your VCS and games would work fine.

[YarsFan]

Thanks for helping with my ignorance, and apologies for expressing the concern in the Fatal Run 2089 thread too (that kind of brought about some anxiety about whether I’d still be able to play my VCS games forever after Atari drops support hence this thread). I just figured with the login that I always had to be online with my VCS for some reason. 
 

It’s a relief not to have to worry about it bricking. I love my VCS. Darn shame that it never took off like I had hoped. I still feel like as the cost to manufacturer these goes way down eventually, Atari may be wise to resume production if there’s any profit to be made from doing so. A $99 price point someday would make this sell like hot cakes, but that is probably not going to be possible for many years yet, if ever. Besides, they have to be agile and get the best ROI on every scarce dollar spent. It’s just a darn shame VCS did not become the Atari comeback I had hoped for. 

Edited September 3 by YarsFan

[leech]

3 minutes ago, YarsFan said:

Thanks for helping with my ignorance, and apologies for expressing the concern in the Fatal Run 2089 thread too (that kind of brought about some anxiety about whether I’d still be able to play my VCS games forever after Atari drops support hence this thread). I just figured with the login that I always had to be online with my VCS for some reason. 
 

It’s a relief not to have to worry about it bricking. I love my VCS. Darn shame that it never took off like I had hoped. I still feel like as the cost to manufacturer these goes way down eventually, Atari may be wise to continue production if there’s any profit to be made from doing so. Then again, they have to be agile and get the best ROI on every scarce dollar spent. It’s just a darn shame VCS did not become the Atari comeback I had hoped for. 

I think part of it was that the scheme for the VCS was thought up under an entirely different Atari than it is today.  They needed to figure out how to sell the thing to people in the UK, and just didn't bother, even though I bet they could have shipped a decent enough level of units for it to have been profitable.  I think the problem is, the EU (and someone please correct me if I'm wrong on this) have different standards than our own FCC, and you probably (as a manufacturer) have to pay certain fees and such to each region to get get the approval process started to get your product to be able to be sold in that region.  Maybe they just did some cost analysis, figured out the massive amount of EU/UK plugs they'd have to purchase to add in with each system and the numbers just didn't align.

 

It's also quite possible that they have so many in stock still, that making more seemed foolish until that stock sold out.

[zzip]

17 hours ago, leech said:

You do realize that (as others have said) you don't need to be online to log into it.  And also, the games are DRM free?  I've tested this with a few games, I can boot into the Linux side of my install, and launch the games installed from AtariOS.  I've even copied one to a USB stick and played it on my Linux Desktop system running Debian Sid.  At this stage, the only thing Atari could 'end' is support for the VCS and take down the store so you're unable to buy new games.  And even then, your VCS and games would work fine.

Can confirm this works as well.   The only issue is some of the games didn't seem to include "quit" functionality.   Atari OS let's you press on the Atari button on the controller to get out of those games, but on a different Linux OS you'll likely have to Alt-Tab your way out and kill the game (unless someone knows a more convenient trick?)

[leech]

Just now, zzip said:

Can confirm this works as well.   The only issue is some of the games didn't seem to include "quit" functionality.   Atari OS let's you press on the Atari button on the controller to get out of those games, but on a different Linux OS you'll likely have to Alt-Tab your way out and kill the game (unless someone knows a more convenient trick?)

If you're using Gnome or the new KDE Overview (I think) you should be able to just hit the 'Meta/Windows' key and click the X to exit out of them.  Or likely the ol' Alt+F4 will work too.

It always throws me off on game consoles on how to quit anyhow... like the PS4/5 usually doesn't have the option to quit in games either... Ha, granted in the days of yore, you'd just hit the power button and pull out the cart...

[zzip]

2 hours ago, leech said:

It always throws me off on game consoles on how to quit anyhow... like the PS4/5 usually doesn't have the option to quit in games either... Ha, granted in the days of yore, you'd just hit the power button and pull out the cart...

You can usually hit the home button on the controller to get out.     On standard Linux/Windows,  you usually can't exit out with just the controller, you have to switch to keyboard.   That's annoying if you are trying to use something like the VCS as a living room console in PC mode.

[leech]

On 9/4/2024 at 11:22 AM, zzip said:

You can usually hit the home button on the controller to get out.     On standard Linux/Windows,  you usually can't exit out with just the controller, you have to switch to keyboard.   That's annoying if you are trying to use something like the VCS as a living room console in PC mode.

Yeah, for the PC it really depends on the game.  If it has proper controller support, the exit is generally just in the system menu or whatever.  The annoying ones to me is where you have to exit to the main menu first, and then you can 'quit to desktop'.  Nice thing with the Steam Deck, or 'Big Picture Mode' on Steam is that you can quit games the normal PC way, or via the same way you usually can with game consoles.  Kind of a 'best of both worlds'.  But there's generally always 'Alt+F4'

[zzip]

13 hours ago, leech said:

Yeah, for the PC it really depends on the game.  If it has proper controller support, the exit is generally just in the system menu or whatever.  The annoying ones to me is where you have to exit to the main menu first, and then you can 'quit to desktop'

I don't even mind when you have to go to the main menu to quit.   It's the games that forgot to add a "quit" option altogether that annoy me

 

13 hours ago, leech said:

 Nice thing with the Steam Deck, or 'Big Picture Mode' on Steam is that you can quit games the normal PC way, or via the same way you usually can with game consoles.  Kind of a 'best of both worlds'

If you can run the AtariVCS Linux games from Steam Big Picture mode, and exit the stubborn games from the controller,  that would make it a nice alternative to the AtariOS UI whenever Atari ends support

[leech]

1 hour ago, zzip said:

I don't even mind when you have to go to the main menu to quit.   It's the games that forgot to add a "quit" option altogether that annoy me

 

If you can run the AtariVCS Linux games from Steam Big Picture mode, and exit the stubborn games from the controller,  that would make it a nice alternative to the AtariOS UI whenever Atari ends support

Yeah, that's what annoys me as well, no quit option.  I'll have to give that a try this morning.  In theory, it should be as easy as:

1) Load up Linux on the VCS (either through install or LiveUSB stick).

2) Copy game to the stick / scp it over to your computer.

3) Add 'Non-steam game to steam'. 

4) Laugh evilly

 

Hmm, may need to see what's a better option for the 2600/7800, just copy over the app, or use Stella, etc natively...