Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/05/01/atari-vcs-delayed-to-2019.html
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Typical Atari. Delay your console release until it no longer matters.
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Maybe it’ll come bundled with the sequel to Duke Nukem Forever.
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More apt would be Half Life 3. At least Duke Nukem Forever came out even if it sucked 
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Engadget’s subhead “4K HDR at 60FPS seems a bit overkill for playing Asteroids” is cute but in actuality if you want to emulate the arcade Asteroids more horsepower is just going to help you simulate a vector display.
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Which Atari was named the VCS prior? I remember the 2600, 600, 800, 1040ST, and the TT.
The VCS will support 4K resolutions, HDR and 60fps gameplay.
This is pretty meaningless. It’s going to be a branded Linux PC, which means it’ll be relatively low-spec for the price. It’s not a console with with its own OS, game standards or higher performance for the price; whether you can get 4K, HDR, 60fps gameplay will depend entirely on the individual games, and will only be possible if the games aren’t demanding. It doesn’t sound like Atari (or should I say, “Atari”) is going to be developing or publishing any new games themselves to ensure any new games are capable of that on the machine, but they’re supposedly offering some of the 2600 games under emulation on the system. So I guess you get to play 4K, HDR, 60fps Space Invaders. (Oh, wait, Space Invaders was Taito - they don’t have the rights. Never mind.)
This is literally what they’re using as a selling point. 40 x 192 pixel games in 4K.
That did, eventually, come out, though. I’m not so sure about this one.
The 2600 was originally sold as the VCS (video computer system) for the first five years of its life.
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It needs A.I. to add in high resolution details to the sprites. And maybe to fix some of the bugs. I say A.I. because ideally it should do it for any of the thousands game rather than only fixing a few of the popular ones.
Also I want the games to be as good as I remember them, not as they actually are.
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This. A whole buncha this.
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Yes. I bought one in 77 or 78, and I didn’t know it was a 2600 until years later.
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This system is sooo doomed.
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This is pretty much it. Atari as a publisher/developer is no longer a thing, all it is in this instance is some random company licensing the Atari name and slapping it on a PC. There’s red flags all over this
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It don’t, never did, never will. The linux box they’re working on is probably a huge scam and the reason they’re delaying it? Preorders which start May 30, so they can get enough people to buy it before anyone can see how useless it actually is.
Atari — a doomed brand to begin with. They missed out on innovating, something which literally no other console maker did, and the result is a name which basically means video and audio delivered via RF to a CRT TV.
And it will never mean anything else.
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That is a real thing
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Hilariously, in recent years they’ve been calling themselves a “publisher” because they’ve been licensing out old Atari IP titles to give names to games that someone else entirely develops (and self-publishes) for a share of the profits. (E.g. “Haunted House,” because that’s a totally not-generic name that holds a lot of cultural currency now.) Only a desperate, failed developer would go that route, and predictably, nothing of value has been made that way. Likewise, in this case, at best, they’ve licensed out the name and style for an absurdly expensive 2600 emulator that may also have a few ultra-low-budget games that get made for it. I wouldn’t be surprised if it didn’t come out, and I’d be very surprised if it did anything other than sink like a stone if it does get released. Whatever random company licensed the name is counting on people paying for nostalgia, but that’s the entirety of their plan.
Now they’re one step past doomed, they’re a dead brand. Have been for years. For most of the history of Atari, after their early glory years, they’ve shambled along as a Frankenstein creation, the name being randomly grafted to various companies (multiple companies at the same time, even), but they’re dead now. A feeble zombie at best, dimly aware of its own deceased state. It’s nothing but a parasite, a name that owns some other names that they license out. They’re not making this console - they just rented out the name “Atari” for it. Literally the only things they have of value are ownership of names (and that ownership must be fairly tenuous in most cases).
I don’t know that there’s a “probably” about it, though I guess it depends on where one draws the line defining “scam.” (And whether this will actually get made.)
Essentially it’s a $200 Rasberry Pi/Rock64.
