Picking apart Atari’s latest announcement on the Atari VCS

The business entity currently calling itself “Atari” published a new tech blog today, to address their current status with delivering the long-overdue Atari VCS systems. As usual, things are not well.

At the time of this writing, the world is in the grip of a global pandemic of COVID-19, which originated in China, and has lead to major economic disruptions as authorities in China have shut down entire cities in an effort to contain the spread of the virus.  Under such circumstances, it’s entirely understandable that this could cause delays.

Rather immediately, though, we see the usual disturbing signs that not all is well with the project, beyond these circumstances that are beyond anyone’s control:

…We have confirmed delivery of enough parts by the end of March to build our first 500 Atari VCS production units. A good portion of these first Atari VCS units are earmarked as dev kits for developers.

Four things leap out about this revelation:

One: Previously, Atari had been targeting March 31 for when the VCS would be available for purchase at retail, through GameStop and Wal Mart. 

Two: Indiegogo preorders topped out around 10,000, and presumably Atari must have been intending to supply additional thousands or tens of thousands of units to stock retailers.  But now they say they will have “parts” for 500 units by the end of March, well off the numbers needed to fulfill even the pre-order.

Three: “a good portion of these first Atari VCS units are earmarked as dev kits for developers.” 

So… to be clear on this.  Atari’s business plan is to:

1. Sell consoles through pre-order.
2. Design the consoles.
3. Build the consoles.
4. Provide the consoles to crowdfunding backers and retail and developers all at the same time.
5. Now developers start working on software for use on the console.

I don’t need to spell out why this is the wrong order to do things in, do I?

Getting “dev kits” into the hands of developers early so that there can be launch titles available when the hardware reaches consumers is vital to the success of the console. Games take months and years to develop. They’ve been working on the AtariBox project for a good 3 years now, they should bloody well have games on it when they release it to consumers.

But given that this is just a commodity Linux box in a fancy looking shell that is “certified” to run Unity engine games, what exactly does anyone need with a “dev kit” anyway? The only thing I can think of would be that the VCS’s classic joystick is different enough from a standard gamepad (which they also have for the system) that there’s some need for a dev kit. That’s plausible, but it still doesn’t excuse Atari from not getting dev kits into the hands of developers partnering with them well in advance of the console’s expected release date, which I will point out again is already about two years later than they promised during the crowdfunding campaign.

Four: Why are they receiving parts?  Why aren’t they assembling everything in China? What the fuck?

The blog post goes on from there to go into minute details of manufacturing defect tolerances, for some reason. I guess to show that they have a lot of problems building defect free cases for the thing? That’s reassuring!

I guess they want us to believe that they are working hard with manufacturing to get the details right, but that this hasn’t been easy, and this has been part of the reason for all the delays.

And from there, some footage of people playing emulated Atari arcade titles such as Asteroids, Crystal Castles, and Centipede. And a video of someone playing Fortnight, allegedly on an Atari VCS system. Which, hey, great, but that’s something anyone can do right now, on a computer they already have.

“Atari” then go on to mention that their planned schedule of events has been disrupted as events such as GDC, SXSW, and E3 have been canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Which, given the history of “Atari” attending these events in the last 2-3 years, maybe just means that the there wasn’t any point in them renting a hotel suite across the street from the convention and inviting attendees to swing by while they’re in the neighborhood, riding the event’s coattails.

Will “Atari” be at Pax, or Comic Con? Who knows? Who cares?

The bottom line is: You ain’t seeing your Atari VCS pre-order at the end of March. Surprise, surprise. And if you ever do receive your system, it’ll be around the same time that developers receive their dev kits. So while you’re waiting breathlessly for the next 2-3 years for them to crank out games that were actually designed for this system, you’ll be able to enjoy a library of existing games, many of which are already available elsewhere, and have been for literally the entire history of video games.

Enjoy!