Atari VCS Pre-Orders Started, With 1 BIG Flaw

[PocketNerd]

Sooo, this is an attempt to be another Ouya?

[I-r0k]

If Atari and Nvidia shield had a baby. 

[SteveGrabowski0]

Does this apu look like it could handle games on Dolphin at 1080p? That would be the only reason I'd consider it, but I haven't looked to see if the Dolphin Bar even has Linux drivers.

[Thaldor]

I was kind of hoping this to become something more than another Ouya.

 

"We made a nearly medicore Linux console" is somehow so overused phrase. Even if it's Atari this time trying, it isn't probably going to work. Nostalgia is a big thing but it doesn't cover much. For emulating older systems there's always Retro Pi, which is a lot cheaper and works fine. For upgoming and hot selling indie games: search Ouya from wikipedia and read it, they counted everything on indie devs rushing in and making games for Linux and especially for their console so the console would be successful aaaand, nope. I don't mean bad, I really like Linux on servers and other, but making a console that runs exclusively Linux, well there's some content (actually suprisingly lot) but not much crowd cathering content and as long as there's no crowd, the platform will be only the third priority and not that many developers are going to really invest on it.

 

I don't know how much what Atari said in the 2014 has weight today, but what they said then really doesn't sound good for gaining better content. There has been bankruptcies and everything in the middle, so the winds may have changed a lot, but they said around then that future Atari would concentrate on LGBT, gambling and YouTube content/users. I don't really mind the first one, but the second one sounds like VCS is not going to be Ouya, but an Ouya that has Pong with real money bets and that sounds as inviting as a very dry pile of turd on a desert.

 

And 29$ for a wireless "joy-stick"? Are you kidding me? I know they try to sell it as much as they can for the retrofans, but whitout some really mindblowingly good features, I'm not paying 29$+shipping+taxes for a wireless "joy-stick". And that controller is as generic as it can be today, they could have even tried to do something special.

 

I was really look up for this. Just because I don't really buy the TV for it's smart features, but for the panel and usually those TVs have the worst smart UI ever (unresponsive and laggy) because I rather use Chromecast or my HTPC and I was really hoping that they would either bring well priced woodgrainy retro machine to contest the Chromecast or something with woodgrain and performance to contest my HTPC and they brought something that drops right in the middle and only the more expensive "special edition" has the woodgrainy goodness in it.

[potoooooooo]

Your issue with this was the CPU, not the 32GB of slow as fuck soldered memory?

 

The CPU is fine for the price. But it's going to be seriously hamstrung by the EMMC

[ZcanKal]

I wonder how many "My Atari 2600 is faster than this" jokes there's going to be.

[aezakmi]

$200 for something you could literally do with a $10 cable and a $15 gamepad, nice.

[Yoinkerman]

Aw too bad they don't take btc I'd order one

[Coaxialgamer]

So... A 5 year old architecture at launch ? Talk about DOA

[Sniperfox47]

12 hours ago, valdyrgramr said:

They aren't doing well at selling this to enthusiasts because enthusiasts know this is just another Ouya.  The only people really clinging to this are the diehard fans of the 2600, and that's their target audience.  Anyone else shouldn't really buy this until it's like 30 bucks on Craigslist.

I'm not too sure about that. I already know a couple people who backed it purely out of interest in a Linux media box with this form factor, not even interest in it from a console perspective at all.

 

9 hours ago, Thaldor said:

For upgoming and hot selling indie games: search Ouya from wikipedia and read it, they counted everything on indie devs rushing in and making games for Linux and especially for their console so the console would be successful aaaand, nope.

That's not really a fair comparison though. The Ouya wasn't running stock Linux. It was running Android. And Android back then was a *terrible* platform for game development. Had to use OpenGL ES. This was before the times of the Android Extension Pack so none of the features of full OpenGL. This meant redoing the whole graphics side of your software in many cases. You also couldn't use most of your applications native libraries because very few gaming libraries at the time targeted ARM.

 

Developing games for the Ouya was a Trainwreck and that was largely because of Android and their Ultra-budget ARM hardware.

 

This uses standard GNU/Linux on x86 hardware so there's already a *ton* of software that can be easily brought to their store. Pretty much any DRM-free Linux title on Humble/GOG could just be exported to their store lickety split. And even for SteamOS titles on Steam, the devs would just have to remove the steam specific code to offer it through Atari's store.

 

9 hours ago, Thaldor said:

And that controller is as generic as it can be today, they could have even tried to do something special.

Sorry but I just want to point out that that's largely because the optimal controller layout is pretty much a solved problem. Anything they change on the typical layout wouldn't really serve much purpose.

 

And if you don't want to use their "generic" controller you don't have to. Feel free to use your Xbox controller, PS4 controller, or Switch Pro Controller. Feel free to use flight sticks or driving wheels or any of the other input methods you'd use connected to a computer. It supports pretty much any USB or Bluetooth controller.

 

8 hours ago, potoooooooo said:

Your issue with this was the CPU, not the 32GB of slow as fuck soldered memory?

 

The CPU is fine for the price. But it's going to be seriously hamstrung by the EMMC

How is EMMC a problem? EMMC 5.0, supported by the chipset, is Max 3Gb/s same as Sata 2 in the PS4. And even if it's EMMC 4.5 that's still a max of 1.5Gb/s which is more than enough.

 

And then you've also got USB 3.0 for an external hard drive which is where you'd probably be storing any bigger games *anyways*.

[CyanideInsanity]

23 minutes ago, valdyrgramr said:

A couple isn't really much compared to who they're trying to target, though.  Do you have proof that they have a large enthusiast following?

Maybe not enthusiast, but I dont think 2600 fans are the audience either. I dont think anyone interested in this because or its name and physical design are interested in getting borderlands 2 on this machine yet atari is as they mentioned to forbes. Assuming you are referring to a "classic" system demograph a la nes and snes classic.

 

I think the only reason for the name/design and catalog of classics is a gimmick for initial sale and the purpose of the machine.

[Castdeath97]

What is going to make this is the software not the hardware, I don't know why are people that bothered by the APU choice. This was never intended to be state of the art in any shape or form.

[CyanideInsanity]

5 minutes ago, valdyrgramr said:

It's the target audience, but that doesn't mean they want to be the audience.  They tried so hard to make it look like the 2600, and the point was nostalgia.  They keep boosting it towards them too.  

Ah I see what you're getting at. Can't say I disagree actually.

 

[Sniperfox47]

1 hour ago, valdyrgramr said:

A couple isn't really much compared to who they're trying to target, though.  Do you have proof that they have a large enthusiast following?

You're right that a few isn't very many, but my friend base isn't particularly large either.

 

I never claimed that they have a large enthusiast audience, I just expressed doubt in it not appealing to enthusiasts at all. Although you and I also likely have different definitions for enthusiast.

 

40 minutes ago, valdyrgramr said:

They tried so hard to make it look like the 2600, and the point was nostalgia.  They keep boosting it towards them too.  

The point also could be brand identity? What do people know Atari for?

 

The Atari consoles are iconic to the brand and especially with it being a different company with Atari's name plastered on, they likely want to maintain that brand image so they can have potential customers go "Atari? Oh wait they're the guys who made that console back then right? They probably know what they're doing."

[Zodiark1593]

15 hours ago, SteveGrabowski0 said:

Does this apu look like it could handle games on Dolphin at 1080p? That would be the only reason I'd consider it, but I haven't looked to see if the Dolphin Bar even has Linux drivers.

Well, consider that at 5 GHz, the FX 9590 is only barely keeping pace with a stock i5-2500K, and that Haswell and newer have dramatically faster IPC in emulation (30%+), I have some doubts that the Bristol Ridge chip will be able to keep the frame rate steady.

[Doobeedoo]

Yeah like why old Bristol Ridge over new Raven Ridge and 4GB RAM only. Even such price for something like it. 

[Sniperfox47]

Just want to point out for the people that are worried about the CPU performance, if this thing is using, using what we know, something akin to the A10-9700B (Bristol Ridge. A10. 4 cores aka 2 modules. 35W TDP. R7 GPU.) then the CPU will be about on par (little behind) the PS4 and Xbox one for multithreaded performance, and will totally trounce them for single threaded performance.

 

Raven's Ridge may have been nice, but ultimately for the kinds of things it's intended the extra CPU performance is *really* not necessary.

[Thaldor]

6 hours ago, Sniperfox47 said:

That's not really a fair comparison though. The Ouya wasn't running stock Linux. It was running Android. And Android back then was a *terrible* platform for game development. Had to use OpenGL ES. This was before the times of the Android Extension Pack so none of the features of full OpenGL. This meant redoing the whole graphics side of your software in many cases. You also couldn't use most of your applications native libraries because very few gaming libraries at the time targeted ARM.

 

Developing games for the Ouya was a Trainwreck and that was largely because of Android and their Ultra-budget ARM hardware.

 

This uses standard GNU/Linux on x86 hardware so there's already a *ton* of software that can be easily brought to their store. Pretty much any DRM-free Linux title on Humble/GOG could just be exported to their store lickety split. And even for SteamOS titles on Steam, the devs would just have to remove the steam specific code to offer it through Atari's store.

I was first going to use Steam Machine as comparison, but that felt too bad since what really killed Steam Machine and SteamOS was Valve itself. They had everything set just right that there was possibility for a big breakthrough, but then Valve started to postpone releases and hindering the process and when they finally realeased we already had Steam Link which basicly did the same and more with cheaper price.

 

And as I said, there is content and quite a lot of it for Linux. But the big names are missing and that has been the problem quite a while (more like always). I don't mean to bash on Linux more than that I would love to see Linux climb up and really start to compete on gaming markets and I believe now with Vulkan there's real chances for it. But really to get Linux based console or better HTPC to be the new hot stuff on the market someone needs to throw money at it, and I mean a lot of money at it, like what Microsoft did with Xbox, it didn't try to compete with PS2, but it tried to get the foothold on the market with exclusives and nothing is that expensive than getting new, hyped and profitable exclusive content, but it's also a shortcut to bigger audiences. And I mean in example something like Halo, Bungie wasn't that known developer outside of the macintosh world where it was well known, then Steve Jobs introduced third-person shooter for Windows and Mac called Halo by Bungie and around year later Bungie was bought by Microsoft and Halo was going to be what it is, FPS exclusively for Xbox, and we are probably not talking about some small sums of money here. And I cannot see Atari attaining something like that. And I don't see VCS perform well without even having some high selling games (which by now we cannot say anything because there is none published) or something really much more special than nostalgia (which by now has been probably covered with Atari Flashback consoles) and Ubuntu with propietary UI.

 

And with the controller, I don't really mind the button locations, I mean the visuals. It's like the very flesh of the whole VCS: It has Atari logo for the nostalgia nerds but at the same time it's plain modern black bluetooth controller, they could have gone over the top and made something like woodgrain D-pad and buttons and have it some more nostalgic design with the modern comfy layout, but they didn't and that's the problem. When they first teased with the VCS it was all about nostalgia, woodgrain and Atari and somewhere in the middle someone decided "Nah, let's make modern HTPC with console grade HW and drop the level of nostalgia to special edition level". I wouldn't mind paying 200$ for a console grade HTPC which looks like 2600 and PS3 had a baby with very bad case of woodgrain and those old really good looking Atari switches and controllers that match that look. But now it just feels to drop right in the middle, it doesn't have anything that my HTPC and Chromecast doesn't have and it doesn't have the looks that I wouldn't care about it's features (and I can say that I would have spared a lot of money with just getting something like RetroPie, but instead I have almost every mini retro console even though I have some of them as originals, just because they save space and look good).

[potoooooooo]

12 hours ago, Sniperfox47 said:

How is EMMC a problem? EMMC 5.0, supported by the chipset, is Max 3Gb/s same as Sata 2 in the PS4. And even if it's EMMC 4.5 that's still a max of 1.5Gb/s which is more than enough.

 

And then you've also got USB 3.0 for an external hard drive which is where you'd probably be storing any bigger games *anyways*.

It's not about sustained performance, a hard drive would be fine if it were maxed on big files the entire time. But that's not how this works, it's all random small depth reads and writes, which EMMC is much weaker at than a sata or PCIE ssd would be.

[Sniperfox47]

4 hours ago, potoooooooo said:

It's not about sustained performance, a hard drive would be fine if it were maxed on big files the entire time. But that's not how this works, it's all random small depth reads and writes, which EMMC is much weaker at than a sata or PCIE ssd would be.

Yeah... But it's still faster than a hard drive which is what all the other consoles use is my point. At least in terms of latency. Random read/write is probably better too assuming it uses decent EMMC 5.0 chips.

 

You said that its biggest problem is the use of "slow" EMMC. Why is it a problem if it still has a faster solution than it's intended competitors?

 

I'd say the use of SD cards for extended storage will likely be a far bigger issue than the onboard storage.

[AlTech]

Rip. Bulldozer needs to die.

[AlTech]

@The Benjamins Couldn't they (Atari) delay the official release of it so that it contains Raven Ridge Embedded considering that another product was just announced with it?

 

TDP would be similar but performance would be much higher considering the Graphics in Bristol Ridge is from GCN 3rd Gen (aka Tonga Micro-architecture) and Raven Ridge uses GCN 5th Gen (aka Vega Micro-architecture).

[The Benjamins]

14 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

@The Benjamins Couldn't they (Atari) delay the official release of it so that it contains Raven Ridge Embedded considering that another product was just announced with it?

 

TDP would be similar but performance would be much higher considering the Graphics in Bristol Ridge is from GCN 3rd Gen (aka Tonga Micro-architecture) and Raven Ridge uses GCN 5th Gen (aka Vega Micro-architecture).

They could, It already is set to ship Q1-2 2019, and they do have in the Specs that they could change.

 

But for a 2019 Gaming device to have this APU is stupid IMO.

[Zagna]

49 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

@The Benjamins Couldn't they (Atari) delay the official release of it so that it contains Raven Ridge Embedded considering that another product was just announced with it?

I'm guessing price has everything to do with it. Atari early birds kit for 199$, UDOO BOLT cheapest tier with case, power and memory is 402$.

Ryzen Embedded likely are as expensive as 2200G/2400G which are 99$ and 149$. Bristol Ridge on the other hand must be really cheap as AMD is more or less giving away old stock.

[Sauron]

2/3rds of the price of a nintendo switch... this will fail sooooo hard... and not because of the specs.

 

Obviously don't preorder considering we know virtually nothing about this product's software support and whether or not the advertised features will even work... wait for the release and the reviews before you consider it, as with everything.