Atari VCS: To pre-order or not to pre-order?

Blogging live to you and yours! It’s your boy TWOTALL4UFOOL! So this Atari VCS is picking up a lot of momentum from what I’ve been seeing. Pre-orders have finally opened up for it and the response has been overwhelming positive. It has raised over $2 million, and has almost 10,000 backers as I type this post for you right now on its Indiegogo page. And the crazy thing about it is that it doesn’t have a working prototype. To pre-order or not to pre-order? Let’s discuss it.

So if you go to the Indiegogo page you’ll see a list of what you can do with this thing if you scroll down. It says you can play classic and current games. I would hope you can play classic games. But about current games. This is why you need a working prototype. We know that this thing can run old school Atari games with not problem. If my cell phone can run old school Atari games then I would hope this thing can. But the big question is what current games can it run? Nobody knows because no there’s no prototype. I need to see more than just E.T., and Centipede running on this thing Atari. It can also stream your favorite entertainment apps. So can my Nvidia Shield Android TV. But I know I can stream current games using Steam on the Nvidia Shield. I’m not sure if the Atari VCS can do that.

If you continue down the page you’ll see that they talk about 100+ Atari games pre-loaded on every Atari VCS. Well for what these guys are selling it for all the games Atari has ever made should be on this thing. Let’s keep going. It talks about its online multiplayer. Ok something new. But still no proof because no prototype. It talks about some studio partnerships. I’m sure these studios have been around a while but I’ll be honest I have never heard of any the ones they are talking about here. I’ll be honest. None of these studios strike me as “oh this is a game changer”. Looks like this is going to be running Linux. If you keep going down on the page it talks about the controller, the joystick, the day one edition, and then it gets to the price. The collector’s edition starts at $299 and onyx version starts at $199 for now. If you keep going beyond that you’ll see a schedule of Atari’s plans with this thing. In Q3 later this year they expect to have a 2nd prototype. Funny since I haven’t seen any games demonstrated on the first one. But the this thing isn’t planned to be released until July of 2019. A full year from now. Possibly longer assuming there will be more pushbacks.

Ok so to pre-order or not to pre-order? LOL! SMH! Where do I begin? Nostalgia is at an all time high. They could do what Nintendo is doing and just put out a micro console and be done with it. Oh wait there already is one. Click here and you can see the one that AtGames put together. Now if you loved Atari growing up that is one thing but with the price of this thing, no working prototype, and its uncertainty of if it can play certain games this is a red flag. It reminds me of the OUYA and we remember how big of a failure that was. I feel Atari should just stop while they’re ahead. But the name is the only reason why it’s still in the game. But they’ve delayed pre-orders several times now. This can’t be a project people trust. But with as many backers as it has apparently I’m wrong. But I’m not going to support this what so ever. I think this is going to FAIL! I think that Atari is going to fall flat on its face and will never recover as a result. Now if I’m wrong I’ll eat my words but until then I’m standing by my statements! Nostalgia can only go so far for me. But for me it’s pretty simple since I didn’t own an Atari growing up.

So I want to know a couple of things. Are you going to support this Indiegogo campaign? Are you interested in picking up the Atari VCS? Let me know in the comments below. If you plan on getting and are a backer to the campaign I invite you to leave a comment. We can probably even have a friendly debate about this. Blogging live to you and yours! It’s your boy TWOTALL4UFOOL! Remember that TOGETHER EVERYONE ACHIEVES MORE! Thanks for reading folks! More great content to come! LATER!