New Atari Console Coming (Ataribox)?


Pricing and availability has finally been firmed up.

It'll have an AMD raven ridge APU (unknown exactly which one) and either 4GB or 8GB of RAM. Both a classic-style joystick and modern gamepad are available options. The 4GB model with no controller starts at $250 and packages go up to $390 for the 8GB with both controllers. Apparently different vendors will have different colors, so choose your store wisely if you need to match the wood-grain cabinet of your 19" RCA TV.

You can preorder it now, though I have no clue why you would. You won't actually get one until next March (if then), and at these prices, it's unlikely to sell out.

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$390 for an Atari (2600) Emulator? Are you sure it's not more like $39? Or what else can this thingy do?

From what I can tell, it does a rather good job of sucking funds from retro gamer fans, but not much else, at least from what I've seen so far. LOL

Chris
 
It's a full-on linux PC with a ryzen APU. Compared to building a similarly-specced machine yourself, the box-of-parts cost is pretty fair:

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD - Ryzen 3 2200G 3.5 GHz Quad-Core Processor ($86.99 @ Walmart)
Motherboard: ASRock - B450M-HDV R4.0 Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard ($64.89 @ OutletPC)
Memory: Patriot - Signature Line 4 GB (1 x 4 GB) DDR4-2400 Memory ($20.31 @ Amazon)
Storage: Transcend - MTS800 32 GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive ($16.03 @ Amazon)
Case: Apex - DM-387 HTPC Case w/275 W Power Supply ($62.75 @ Newegg)
Custom: Lemorele Wireless USB WiFi Adapter 5G/2.5G Dual Band AC 600Mbps Mini Wifi Dongle Bluetooth 4.2 ($13.89 @ Amazon)
Total: $264.86
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-06-12 15:35 EDT-0400

Whether it's actually worth buying depends on how much you like the look of the retro enclosure vs a generic PC case, and whether or not atari (or whoever is licencing the name these days) actually releases worthwhile games for the system. The plan (as they're pitching it) is that this will be a full-fledged console with an entire ecosystem of modern AAA-quality games. Of course we've all heard that before.
 
My take is that the only thing that can push new hardware like this would have to be exclusive software, like ouya and the many others, I never saw much on that front.
My conclusion is: general hardware for money grabbing.
 
it's hard to judge motives, but generally making money is something people need to do to live... i can appreciate that it's linux under the hood. but i do worry that it's a chicken-and-egg type problem for software developers -- you need mass adoption for a title to make money, but you need software to make the console appealing...
 
"Linux gaming" is already a very small subset of "PC gaming". This atari box will necessarily be a smaller subset of linux gaming. I don't foresee any developers going out of their way to compile/package games specifically for this system unless they were already planning a linux version for GOG/steam distribution.

So at the end of the day, there's probably not going to be anything you can do on this atari console that you couldn't do on a similarly-specced linux PC. Meanwhile, there are certainly going to be *lots* of things you can do on a linux PC that you won't be able to do on the atari.

While the price is fair for the hardware, it's still well outside the realm of "impulse purchase" for a console with such an inherently limited ecosystem. I really can't see this thing selling well. I honestly wouldn't give it more than a 50/50 chance of even making it to market, and perhaps a 1 in 10 chance of the company still being in business a year later.
 
Providing you can plug a keyboard into one of its USB ports and reflash the thing, then it's no better and no worse than any other AMD powered Linux PC (albeit on a fairly limited power budget), and it won't matter if the company goes bust).

But as Chip pointed out you can buy a much beefier AMD desktop machine for the same money (albeit containing a 65W CPU, but that's not a problem in a big PC box). So for me it really depends if I liked the atari box and could countenance going AMD for graphics.
 
There's some new news of this being all but a scam at this point(as most of us voiced at the start), but do a news search for relevant info, as it seems to be all over the place.

Chris
 
Their indigogo page is still sitting at the "prototype" milestone, and they haven't posted an update for more than two months. Even that update didn't show or explain anything that wasn't in the original campaign description.

Crowdfunding campaigns are not one of the things where "no news is good news". I don't want to jump the gun and claim they just scarpered with ~$3 million, but that is seeming more and more likely with every week of silence.
 
I like the gif where he shows how the logo lights up without a power cable attached but yeah they did do some work on it for sure, they had a lot of money and time after all
 
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