Ataribox and missed opportunities
2017-07-17 - orzo
Atari's latest owner and CEO Fred Chesnais released first mockup renders of their new "Ataribox", a wannabe competitor to Nintendo's retro consoles. As of now the box itself is of little interest to Linux gamers (or developers), but it does inspire a lot of sentimental ideas.
Now - gaming blogs and discussions might suggest otherwise - but current mainstream community is truly too young to recall Atari's only relevant console - Atari 2600 - the sole inspiration for Ataribox. Folks who lived through A2600' golden age are in their late 40s (or early 50s) today; many of them are probably grandparents by now.
I'm not the youngest gamer myself, but even I have retrospectively only vague memories of A2600, and most of them are negative. I never owned one, thought. I've seen one at friend's place -- once -- and never returned to it again. Atari consoles weren't part of our lives, not even marginaly. The real Atari experience -- arcades aside -- started with 800xl in +/- 1985. I haven't heart of their "early console business" (or E.T. phenomenon) until late 90s. And why would I - why would any kid care about failed "products" or "company mismanagement"?
For me Atari will always symbolize the early [proto-]arcades and - most of all - 8bit/16bit gaming computers. The good quality stuff.
Atari is anything but video consoles.
on picture Atari 2600 looks more appealing than its modern immitation
Unfortunately, as it happened, by mid 90s microcomputers have been driven out of the market. Intel desktops became more affordable and thanks to the stiff competition between IBM, HP, Dell or Compaq, they rapidly took over schools, offices and households.
The "old school" "propriety" entrepreneurs (Atari, C=, Armstrad, Acorn, Apple...) could not keep up with the open market. No parent in his right mind would invest into two computers - "IBM compatible" and "C=/Atari incompatibles" - just for the sake of gaming.
if I had to choose again between 'DOS Navigator + Borland Pascal' and Amiga/Falcon, I'd go for MS DOS
Ever since the demise of C=/Atari in 1995, the gap left by their gaming computers is still painfully present today. 8-bit kids grew up into sentimental gaming adults and yet to this day there hasn't been a single attempt to cash on it.
Even Valve's Steam Machines are utterly horrible missteps - completely denying PC culture and thrashing everything that Valve [should] have learnt from Half-Life modding culture.
slim this beauty down and I'm yours, Atari
Nevertheless, the concept of a microcomputer is extremely simple. Take a cheap notebook, strip it of its display and touch-pad. Install barebones OS on it, free as much resources as possible - give it minimalist wayland wm and let it boot into python/js/nodejs IDE.
If possible, the computer could support streaming from Steam. Maybe it could ship with pre-installed Unity3D and Substance tools... And why stop there, maybe it could come with a free subscriptions for a couple of months. A time-limited taste of Unity3d Pro.
Later on Atari could add an integrated market for game assets, music licenses, contract jobs...
Democratize distribution a bit... Let the devs hire and review marketing agencies, promotional partners...
All this can be done. So much work, so much is missing on the market. And yet, here we are again, back to the retro console gaming. As if Centipede or Missile Command are system sellers.