Atari VCS, the console that wants to revive the legend

Like the Phoenix, the legend of the Atari consoles is reborn from the ashes: a team that has recovered the prestigious name has just launched its crowdfunding campaign on IndieGoGo to launch the production of the Atari VCS. A new console that has already raised more than $ 2.2 million in 24 hours and should be delivered in July 2019.

Atari made the logical choice to play the retro card for the design of its console, pushing the vice to propose, in addition to a modern controller, clones of the awful joysticks of the time - you will play 5 minutes with before smash them against a wall, promised. The device is intended to be connected to a television or monitor and thus behaves like a game console.

But since it works with a modified version of Ubuntu Linux, the Atari VCS is a PC at the base, especially since it is animated by a Bristol Bride A10, an old AMD chip incorporating a graphic part whose design is prior to the current Ryzen generation. First misstep: if the tests of the current generation (Raven Ridge) are rather good, it is not the same for the chosen chip; performance may be limited. To support this processor, there are 4 GB of RAM and 32 GB of eMMC storage (it is not, but we can expand the memory through a Micro SD card). And all the connectivity paraphernalia, physical (USB A, USB C, Ethernet, HDMI 2.2, etc.) as wireless (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth).

Heritage Atari requires, the VCS embarks a hundred old games, enough to tear the retina with big pixels on your brand new TV 4K. But the machine would also be compatible with the Steam Linux catalog and Atari in its campaign is preparing solutions to play a game catalog via download or streaming. Without giving more details on the partners with whom it is negotiating. Only certainty: a small number of independent studios would be preparing titles for the console.

The Atari VCS is not the first crowdfunding console: Who remembers Ouya, a huge Kickstarter success of the years 2012/2013 who had given birth to an Android console as poor as badly finished? Not many people and so it is good to remember this failure - the console died in 2015. The problem of the consoles market is that the money is harvested mostly on the side of the software (games, services), the material is often sold at a loss or with few margins to offer a powerful machine ...

Will Atari find the martingale that allows him to go further than creating a console for nostalgia? And this Atari VCS will it bring something more compared to a Steam Link or Nvidia Shield? The answer in (at least) a good year. And if you believe it, the first price without a controller is $ 199 ... without a controller, without VAT, without shipping and without customs fees. The Onyx version with original and modern controller is $ 279. If we add all the costs, it's expensive the crisis of nostalgia. Hope that games and services are level.