The Atari VCS, the new gaming console from Atari, has been launched as an Indiegogo campaign with preorders available today, with a shipping date set for early 2019.
Along with the launch, the company has also revealed the technical specs of the console, which include 32GB of internal storage, 4GB of RAM, and AMD’s Bristol Ridge A1 CPU and Radeon R7 GPU.
That’s certainly not a bad set of specifications, but one has to wonder just how much third party interest there is to go around. Still, even without a ton of original games, this machine is basically a very nicely designed Linux machine, which in an of itself makes it a really tempting product. That being said – it’s a crowdfunding project, so take all the warnings that comes with that into account.
Okay, so I’ve got a 2600 woody (the hardware not ..well okay) .. and a Harmony Cart with 1gb flash. I’ve got nearly 400mb of software on it.
What the heck do they plan to use the rest of the 31.6gb for?
Heh
As it supports Steam I view this as a nice steambox! Not that steamboxes are popular but at least it should get a decent library of games available on linux.
Yeah, because for $200/$300, you’d better play something else than Centipedes or Missile Command.
Am I the only one who thinks that Atari should not need to crowdfund their stuff?
I think it’s a good way to see if you’re still relevant without the need to “blindly” invest into a niche marketing campaign (we’re talking about retro stuff here) and call for investors to stay afloat.
Last time Atari did that (with the Jaguar + Jts) they had a bad time. Wish them good luck (as a long time Atari -computer- fan) and to fare well. Perhaps they’ll make another “computer” (add a keyboard to the VCS ?)
Also bypasses their distribution network – no need for them to buy in and more margin.
Oh, console on crowdfunding, how many of those did succeed
Well, basically none which were even somewhat legit like Ouya and none which were obvious scams.
Any chance it will also run Windows or will it be locked so that only its Linux OS will run?
Because if this thing can dual boot? You will be able to play a pretty big chunk of games on this thing as it IS running a pretty decent AMD APU so you could run Steam on Linux to play a ton of games and those that aren’t supported just reboot into Windows and you could play those too.
Plus there are plenty of things people are gonna want to run (like Netflix) that last I checked didn’t have a native Linux app so if this thing can dual boot I could see it being an attractive option for a set top box.
Add to that all the other game sources you could run if it can also run Windows like Origin, Ubiplay, GOG (about half my GOG library doesn’t have Linux support) and I could see this being an attractive option if they can keep the $299 price point.
Awesome!!! Woody!! BACKED!! its a small price to pay for my introduction to video games soo long ago.
Even though I won´t have the slightest chance to get one on these I think they look really cool and it´s great to see this backed by a serius company.
Best of lucks to the project!