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Latest Comments by emphy
The Atari VCS team aren't doing themselves any favours by accusing The Register of being professional trolls
23 June 2018 at 8:29 pm UTC

Quoting: Narvarth...

Let's check the real facts : people backing it on indiegogo will get a mini-PC with hundreds (thousands ?) games already available and a cool design for this price. Can we really call this a scam ?

Please stop feeding all the youtube/click bait trolls.


It's really disappointing that we have to explain such evident facts on a Linux website...

If atari actually delivers the system, people backing this on indiegogo may get a mini-pc. You may want to check on the history of successfully delivered crowd funded Atari branded products to check how likely that is.

If the Atari brand wasn't raising red flags already, the use of indiegogo and the ludicrously low initial funding goal should.

Even if we assume good faith from the company (that's a huge assumption), they don't exactly inspire confidence that they are capable of actually delivering on the project.

The Atari VCS team aren't doing themselves any favours by accusing The Register of being professional trolls
23 June 2018 at 4:43 am UTC

Quoting: slaapliedje
Quoting: emphy
Quoting: cprnI don't get it. Why are they lynching the guy? His responses make perfect sense.

He brought a design unit that isn't a final product and isn't meant to work with other devices so he can't know what will happen if somebody tries to connect them. He's not at liberty to say what went wrong during launch, yet they keep asking what it was. He gets as close to the truth as he can by giving them an analogy that suggests it was one specific aspect that came out sub-par in final testing and has been improved since then but isn't in production yet and they bash him for comparing it to a rocket launch even though it worked perfect with both having issues coming out last second. He doesn't want to release specs because they try to keep them up to date and will update before public release so announcing now what they were going to launch before would just be outdated in a few months. He's frustrated he cannot answer them straight without possibly violating NDAs. When inviting them he said he has design models, which means these aren't meant to be run but to be touched, felt, to prove they keep working on the project and he explains it's because they don't have a UI yet. He says project has money to move forward. He says business negotiations with distributors are taking place.

And what they took out of it is they were invited to play a game even though nobody said so? And that nothing works even though the guy said PCB is functional? Basically, they wrote a bullshit article because they hyped themselves and misunderstood the intention of the whole thing. That's not journalism. It's like getting invited to see a brand new type of plates and complaining there wasn't any food on them.

They're not lynching the guy; they're lynching the company. Infogrames has a recent history of shitty cash grabs (e.g RC world getting released way too early from early access the day before planet coaster), so Infogrames has to prove that this ludicrous crowd funding campaign isn't one. Inviting the press to show a plastic model and, basically, answering no questions is not the way to do that...

I'm not saying that's a shit thing to do, but let's face facts, game publishers are KNOWN for doing this.. ALL... THE... TIME... defintely not something that just they did. They sign contracts with developers and a lot of times the developers don't meet the deadlines and the games get released in broken states. This is status quo now. It isn't like the good old days where a game released with no easy patch system in place, so game makers had to actually make sure the games WORKED before they were released.

Look at all the Bethesda games, without a doubt every time they release a new game it's pretty terrible and buggy, it isn't usually fixed until quite some time later.

Should they clean up their act? Certainly. But I kind of think that applies to most publishers/developers.

I don't think you quite realize how bad infogrames has gotten:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJ_I9-CkzDE

The Atari VCS team aren't doing themselves any favours by accusing The Register of being professional trolls
23 June 2018 at 1:54 am UTC

Quoting: cprnI don't get it. Why are they lynching the guy? His responses make perfect sense.

He brought a design unit that isn't a final product and isn't meant to work with other devices so he can't know what will happen if somebody tries to connect them. He's not at liberty to say what went wrong during launch, yet they keep asking what it was. He gets as close to the truth as he can by giving them an analogy that suggests it was one specific aspect that came out sub-par in final testing and has been improved since then but isn't in production yet and they bash him for comparing it to a rocket launch even though it worked perfect with both having issues coming out last second. He doesn't want to release specs because they try to keep them up to date and will update before public release so announcing now what they were going to launch before would just be outdated in a few months. He's frustrated he cannot answer them straight without possibly violating NDAs. When inviting them he said he has design models, which means these aren't meant to be run but to be touched, felt, to prove they keep working on the project and he explains it's because they don't have a UI yet. He says project has money to move forward. He says business negotiations with distributors are taking place.

And what they took out of it is they were invited to play a game even though nobody said so? And that nothing works even though the guy said PCB is functional? Basically, they wrote a bullshit article because they hyped themselves and misunderstood the intention of the whole thing. That's not journalism. It's like getting invited to see a brand new type of plates and complaining there wasn't any food on them.

They're not lynching the guy; they're lynching the company. Infogrames has a recent history of shitty cash grabs (e.g RC world getting released way too early from early access the day before planet coaster), so Infogrames has to prove that this ludicrous crowd funding campaign isn't one. Inviting the press to show a plastic model and, basically, answering no questions is not the way to do that...

The Atari VCS team aren't doing themselves any favours by accusing The Register of being professional trolls
22 June 2018 at 11:23 pm UTC

The company formerly known as Infogrames, that is calling itself Atari nowadays, does not exactly have a recent track record that inspires confidence. Even if they do release that system, it is highly unlikely that it will be anything different from the quick cash grabs any of their other recent releases have been.

Basingstoke from Puppy Games is a tense mix of stealth and action, it's out now
28 April 2018 at 11:56 pm UTC

Quoting: PatolaSeems quite good but sort of expensive right now... I'll wait for sales, preferably on steam because they have regional prices.

That's what I thought; I'll just subscribe to their patreon $1/month and check out the game in 5 months ^_^

Humble Indie Bundle 19 adds in Action Henk and JYDGE if you pay more than the average
4 April 2018 at 10:28 am UTC

Quoting: LinasI think I will skip this one. I used to buy a lot of bundles, but then I figured that if I don't spend €1 or €2 or €5 on a bunch of games that I might play at some point (yeah, right), I can get a €20 game that I really want instead. Math and self-control, two skills that have eluded me for far too long! :P

Also stopped with all the 'side bundles'. However, I still buy every core bundle since those still adhere to the original principles of including linux support and being drm-free for all games. Luckily, they also always include some games which interest me and haven't bought yet.

The Linux-powered games console the Ataribox has become the Atari VCS
20 March 2018 at 2:18 pm UTC

As usual, given the recent history of infogrames, still not going to touch any 'atari' product with a ten-foot pole.

The Linux-powered Ataribox will be available to pre-order on December 14th
12 December 2017 at 10:17 am UTC

Quoting: g000h...
Which leads me on to something positive. If the Nintendo Switch is "big enough" to get DOOM and Skyrim ported to it. Then if a popular name like Atari manages to pull this off as a big hit - Then Skyrim, DOOM could be ported to Atari Box... and who knows, maybe regular Linux will eventually get titles like that.

...

Hate to be negative (well, not really, since we're talking about atari), but the Switch sold in enough numbers to pass the entire linux market share within a single month. By now, not even a year from release, the switch install base is well over 10 times as large. Additionally, many switch users seem to have money to burn; many of them are buying ports at prices as high as double those in competing platforms (steam, xbox ps4).

No way in hell can atari match that with what is, essentially, a conventional console. Even if they hadn't flushed their name down the toilet with such gems as roller coaster tycoon 4 mobile and alone in the dark illumination this would have been a tall order.

Tiny Barbarian DX, a 2D platformer with co-op support is now available on Linux
24 October 2017 at 6:17 pm UTC

Quoting: shawnsterp$30?

Nowadays, it's how you recognise a game published by Nicalis