GRcade

HSH28 wrote:

Ad7 wrote:Why would anyone buy one of these?!

Its a more up market set top box that does 4K HDR streaming. $200 isn't a terrible price for that kind of system.

It's in that price point but if they want that market they should market towards it. It's also towards the high end of the market an Apple TV is £200 but you could get a Amazon Fire TV for £70 or £40 for the stick. Or I could get a PS4 or xbox one for about the same price as you can use them as streaming boxes.

I suspect the key issue here is that we're speculating; at present there is very little detail about what the VCS is and isn't. It does seem at this stage that the VCS could have a bit of an uphill struggle but, until we see the final specifications, pricing and - perhaps most importantly - the games / functions, any comparisons are tough to call.

jawafour wrote:

lex-man wrote:If you don't mind a tower you could get one for £250. There's probably cheaper option but I can't be bothered to look around.

https://www.ebuyer.com/788613-zoostorm- ... -7290-3089

That's doesn't look bad for the money, lex - although you'd need an operating system, keyboard and mouse to go with it - but it doesn't really change my view that nobody looking at the VCS is gonna buy a PC instead (or vice versa). They're completely different markets.

It sort of is, your right, but they seem to be pitching it towards the programming / development market which suggests they're trying to take on the Raspberry pi / PC / stream boxes and games consoles markets all at once. But they'll doing each one slightly worse than the dominate market leaders.

On the programming side it seems to lack the potential for expansion and projects of a Raspberry Pi it's also way more expensive.
It's not as expandable as a PC although it might work well as a desktop replacement for somebody that interested in PC's but you'd have to get the hang of Linux and that person would probably prefer a Laptop.
It doesn't come with a remote control so won't be as good as a standard stream box.
As a games console it's not as good as a PS4 or xbox and certainly doesn't have any AAA titles announced yet.

So it seems like the only person this would be good for would be somebody who wants to do a bit of programming, play some old Atari games and Steam TV who doesn't already own a device you can do any of those things on.

jawafour wrote:I suspect the key issue here is that we're speculating; at present there is very little detail about what the VCS is and isn't. It does seem at this stage that the VCS could have a bit of an uphill struggle but, until we see the final specifications, pricing and - perhaps most importantly - the games / functions, any comparisons are tough to call.

I agree with you there, the games are the most important thing.

Pre-orders go live next Wednesday.

Lagamorph wrote:Pre-orders go live next Wednesday...

This new machine sounds interesting although information is at a real premium; it'll be interesting to see the tech specs on Wednesday. No doubt a number of retro / Atari enthusiasts will pre-order the console regardless but I suspect that most folk will be rather cautious about jumping aboard until a lot more detail is known.

To be honest it sounds like most of the people potentially ordering it will be doing so because of it being open and running Linux which allows you to add your own Package Repositories and managers in order to turn it in a relatively low cost high power Linux box for various emulation solutions and potentially even Steam Linux.

This is supposedly the specifications,




Here's what that kind of spec can do,

What does a Bristol Ridge A1 compare to?

Hmm, so it's like half way between PS3 and PS4, but with 4K output for video, menus etc?

I'd just like to point out that the mad catz mojo was able to output 4k - 3 years ago.

Ad7 wrote:I'd just like to point out that the mad catz mojo was able to output 4k - 3 years ago.

Wasn't that basically an Ouya?

No it was 99% a gen 1 Nvidia shield. In fact some company bought the mojo guts and put it in their own 4k box with different firmware on and sold a load of them.

So this isn't even as powerful as a PS4?
That's pretty disappointing as it surely can't be all that hard to get the parts to at least be on the same level or slightly above.

Lol.

The $199 early bird version doesn't include controllers. You have to back/order them separately and pay additional shipping costs on them.

And still no actual info on what it'll come with games wise. Or what games will become available.

But if you want to order one,
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/atar ... uters-pc#/
Note that the price excludes shipping and also excludes non-US taxes so expect HMRC to whack another 20% ontop plus the admin fee of whatever courier they use.

Those spec don't really help give an impression of how powerful the VCS actually is the R7 is the chip used in a range of devices, although they're all a few generations old now. Same with Bristol Ridge, it's a range of processors, it looks like a fairly off the shelf component though.

EDIT: The most powerful processor from that range can do 1.13 Tflops while the OG PS4 does 1.8. Which does indeed put it slower than the original PS4. I'm also guessing they won't use a top of the line processor from that generation so I expect it'll be slightly slower than that.

I still think this is a scam/test the water situation.

Peter Crisp wrote:So this isn't even as powerful as a PS4?
That's pretty disappointing as it surely can't be all that hard to get the parts to at least be on the same level or slightly above.

I don't understand this point of view at all.

HSH28 wrote:

Peter Crisp wrote:So this isn't even as powerful as a PS4?
That's pretty disappointing as it surely can't be all that hard to get the parts to at least be on the same level or slightly above.

I don't understand this point of view at all.

What's difficult to understand?
I was merely saying that from a technical perspective in 2018 making a new machine as powerful or more powerful than a PS4 shouldn't be hard.
I have a feeling a few people on here if given a bit of time could build a machine to a budget with better specs so I'm disappointed that a company who most likely had at least a few people trying to get them bulk deals on parts could only manage what we've seen.
A PS4 power level device is not exactly going to set anyone's world on fire in 2018.

Obviously a machine like the Switch has less power but they also have the fallback of Nintendo games which this new version of Atari just can't possibly match.

Who exactly is this aimed at? I was interested as I was hoping maybe it would be able to run steam and I could have a cheap machine to run my old games like the Total War series but this can't so why should someone like me buy this?

Peter Crisp wrote:Who exactly is this aimed at? I was interested as I was hoping maybe it would be able to run steam and I could have a cheap machine to run my old games like the Total War series but this can't so why should someone like me buy this?

This can run Steam.
It comes with Linux (which you can install Steam on) but it should run Windows 10 no problem as well.

The spec list isn't actually too bad for the intro price of $200, but you kind of get screwed on it not coming with controllers (though in theory it should support Xbox and PlayStation controllers) but then outside the US you get double screwed by import fees smacking 20% ontop of the price.


I'd have to take a look, but if anyone else can put together a similarly specced HTPC for around £200 I'd certainly like to see.