
Ataribox will be an open, Linux-based console priced starting at $249 - justinucd
https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/26/ataribox-will-be-an-open-linux-based-console-priced-starting-at-249/
======
SwellJoe
The case is delicious. I can't tell anything about it from the article or the
company website, so it's anyone's guess what this actually is. But, it sure
does look pretty.

That said, I worry that at the price point, it'll be a somewhat disappointing
gaming experience compared to a general purpose PC with a decent GPU. Having a
high-quality retro experience is cool and all (I hope they have arcade
versions of the games, rather than the original VCS 2600 versions, as they
were kinda awful), but it's been possible to emulate an Atari on modest
hardware for a couple decades...I doubt I'd spend $250 for a pretty box that
plays classic Atari games, even though I grew up on them.

~~~
throwanem
I'll spend $250 for a nicely designed and well integrated Linux-based STB that
happens to come with an Atari 2600 emulator preinstalled, though.

~~~
radiorental
You're paying $200 for a nice case and the 30 minutes you saved putting Kodi &
Retro Pi on a $35 computer.

~~~
nobleach
Maybe a bit off topic but, how is Kodi on a Pi at decoding high quality MKVs
with DTS sound? I have a Retro Pi on a Raspberry Pi 3b, but haven't bothered
putting Kodi on it as I have a Zotac Z-Box right next to it with optical
outputs and all that jazz. Might be nice to consolidate.

~~~
ashark
Not sure about DTS (I think passthrough works, at least, if you have a
receiver, and I'm _pretty_ sure it'll at least give you stereo from it if you
don't) but an RPi2 will do h.264 1080p video no problem. Any Pi, however, will
fail to play the newer h.265/hevc codec at anything above _maybe_ SD
resolutions, as they lack hardware support for that codec and don't have
anywhere near the horsepower to give you anything but an audio-desynced
slideshow in software.

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hoopism
Tech websites need to stop giving these projects coverage. This is not
Atari... Atari is gone. Slapping licensed games and selling a shiny box with
common internals is not novel and will not somehow grow a magical following.
Ouya was the best example but there's been dozens if not hundreds since.

I know it's a content driven world but techcrunch, kotaku, polywhatever needs
to stop.

~~~
j2bax
From my perspective, its a novel little gaming computer with a neat industrial
design and an Atari license. I don't see any reason the tech news _shouldn 't_
cover it unless they are inundated with higher interest news for the day.

~~~
hoopism
Because time after time the majority of these have turned out to be bad actors
buying up old licenses, putting a few thousand into marketing and deceiving a
large audience into buying into a vision of a console supported by hoardes of
indie developers.

It's a narrative that has played enough times that it warrants at a minimum
skepticism.

Like it or not when you do writeups based solely on the press release it lends
credibility to the project. Personally I think a little diligence and curation
would go a long way. Most these projects end up being funded when these sites
all run to be first to publish... nobody actually spends time investigating
whether the people involved have track record or whether claims are even
reasonable... all of a sudden overnight it's funded... that sucks.

~~~
j2bax
I don't think its really the news sites job to care about a products viability
for longterm success. Almost all software/hardware is pretty short lived when
you think about it. They'd be pretty hard up for articles if they only covered
the stuff that was going to be around for the next decade. It looks
interesting, their readers enjoy reading about it. It probably will ultimately
fail, like most products.

~~~
hoopism
"I don't think its really the news sites job to care about a products
viability for longterm success"

Viability and credibility should not be confused.

Under your definition if I buy the Coleco name tomorrow and send a press
release with a high res image of a console then it's perfectly fine for news
sites to just republish my press release without knowing who I am, what I have
done or whether what I have claimed is true. This by the way is the primary
means of funding on crowdfunding sites... I just disagree with you.

~~~
j2bax
How much research have you done on the Ataribox? I decided to indulge, its
been a while since I brushed up on the history of Atari. Ataribox is
apparently being driven by the people that own the Atari brand and assets.
Despite many years of turmoil and failed business surely owning all of Atari's
assets puts this company at a slight advantage over the ones that have come
before it with console offshoots. If all it is, is a legal Atari emulator with
"a large back-catalog of Atari classic games"[1] then I can't see how you can
reasonably compare it to other brand new console startups without a rich
history in the game industry and highly valuable assets.

1\. [https://atari.com/news/atari-reveals-more-details-about-
atar...](https://atari.com/news/atari-reveals-more-details-about-ataribox)

~~~
hoopism
Got it.

So this company that bought up a failing and abused brand has produced many
other types of consumer devices and has a track record of delivering quality
products to people based on promise alone such as the kickstarter model...

That's what you are saying?

Here's a news article: [http://www.wired.co.uk/article/atari-box-
console-2017-specs](http://www.wired.co.uk/article/atari-box-
console-2017-specs)

~~~
j2bax
At the end of the article: _The Atari we’re left with owns the rights to more
than 200 games. The bet it 's making is simple: people will be willing to fork
out money to play them again on a suitably Atari-looking console._

This is the value proposition in my opinion, that makes it newsworthy.

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krige
Yeah nah it's going to bomb. Ouya 2.0 but with a nostalgic brand attached. To
actually sell in any worthwile amount a console NEEDS to have a proper
developer support. And I mean BIG developer, not a bunch of indie studios
porting their preexisting products to linux.

~~~
mmjaa
Following the world of individual developers for years, I would have to
disagree with you. If they can cover the basic users, i.e. get it shipping at
profit, there's definitely a way to make this product work. Just look at the
GP2X, GPH, GPD Pocket, Pyra Handheld, Open Pandora, Caanoo handhelds, for
example .. the users are there.

~~~
pjmlp
Not paying users you mean, mostly using the consoles to run some variation of
MAME.

This is why major studios mostly ignore GNU/Linux gamers, as many feel
entitled to have nice stuff for free.

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sacheendra
What is the point of a Linux based console?

Traditional consoles had fixed hardware which could be exploited through
vendor specific APIs. If this is just going to run games programmed with
OpenGL, this is not different from any other Linux PC.

Given the introduction of APIs like Vulkan which bings the programmability of
PCs even closer to consoles, I don't see a use case.

The only market I can think of the niche of Atari fans.

~~~
nippples
> What is the point of a Linux based console?

Let's break it down

> What is the point of a console?

Very predictable hardware specs & setup.

> What is the point of the console being Linux-based?

Reduction of brand-new OS development costs; potentially zero need for writing
drivers depending on hardware setup; very extensive presence of compilers /
interpreters / libraries that can be freely usable out of the box.

~~~
Feniks
Too bad Linux still doesn't play nice with most games. SteamOS was a failure.

~~~
merlijn_s
Roughly 1/3 of the steam library runs on Linux. Valve continues to update
SteamOS, and they are still heavily involved in creating Linux drivers and
middleware. Every week new games are ported, new frameworks are released with
Linux support and new Linux dev game tools are created.

SteamOS succeeded in forcing Microsoft to clear up its act, and this is the
main reason for Valve's investment. Their continued investment is to continue
to make sure that they have a plan B. They are doing a lot of behind-the-
scenes work to make the Linux gaming stack amazing. This looks "failed" from
the outside because they aren't pushing the platform heavily, but it is
actually a lot more beneficial that doing a big marketing push before the
platform is ready.

The interesting thing with a platform like Linux is that it's not dependent on
one big revenue stream to survive. Because of this, it doesn't matter if it
takes years to get massive adoption because it's not burning a hole in the
pocket of a company. If xbox was in the same position linux was in, you would
be correct in saying that it failed, because anything less than 30% market
share means gigantic losses for Microsoft which would lead to axing xbox.

PS: Atari's games run fine on Linux. Their retro emulator runs on Linux. They
seem to know what they're doing.

~~~
legohead
Less than 1% of Steam users use linux. [1] It's a failure.

[1]
[http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/?platform=combined](http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/?platform=combined)

~~~
loup-vaillant
Bad metric. Also: [https://www.pcworld.com/article/3045249/linux/linux-
gaming-i...](https://www.pcworld.com/article/3045249/linux/linux-gaming-is-
much-healthier-than-steams-hardware-survey-implies.html)

Valve doesn't really care how many users are running Linux _right now_ —they
still have their Windows revenue. What they do care about is how many users
would _switch_ to Linux if Valve was for some reason forced to drop Windows
support altogether (like, Microsoft goes Apple on their users and mandates an
app store). That number may be much higher.

You'd also have to keep in mind what's keeping users to Windows. From where I
stand, exclusive titles play a big role. Linux has _no_ exclusive title to
speak of. Why would it, that market is way too small for such madness.
Windows, understandably has loads. My only reason for still using Windows is a
couple titles I can't bring myself to renounce.

Then there are drivers and tooling, but that's just the same kind of network
effects, really.

~~~
pjmlp
The same amount that moved from Windows XP to GNU/Linux, because Windows
gaming was doomed with DX 10 being Vista/Windows 7 only.

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jlebrech
I'd still prefer a Raspberry PI 3. if something that form factor could
emulator Gamecube it would be perfect.

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SmellyGeekBoy
Ooh, it's real wood! Even the original 2600 wasn't real wood.

------
brightfog
What an brilliant continuation of an iconic design. I'll will just buy this
because of its case.

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madshiva
crowd-funding at that price? where's the goal? PS4 slim are at almost the same
price. I have a raspberry PI 3 for 50$ that do better.

~~~
sliken
Depends. What can you PS4 do? Do you have to pay to make it a plex client?
Chromecast to? Can you run vlc on it? Can it transcode? Can you run an
opensource game on it? Run a decent browser on it? Steam? How about the
collection of Classic Atari games?

I've only have public knowledge of the Atari, but X86, cheap, and linux does
open some rather interesting possibilities.

I've yet to see a media player that does it better than Roku. If the Atari
could be the roku of gaming it could be quite interesting, even if it doesn't
have the latest/greatest $50-$100 game that the PS4 of Xbox has.

~~~
criddell
> Do you have to pay to make it a plex client? Chromecast to? Can you run vlc
> on it? Can it transcode? Can you run an opensource game on it? Run a decent
> browser on it? Steam? How about the collection of Classic Atari games?

There are probably hundreds of us!

------
taurath
Meanwhile Nintendo is selling the snes classic for $80 - that price point is
glaring.

~~~
meheleventyone
The SNES Classic is locked down and only supports the games it ships with.
That's not really comparable to an open console/computer that ships with a
selection of old Atari games.

~~~
pjmlp
Yeah, because all Linux based games consoles have been a huge market success
thus far.

GP2X, Novatio, Pandora, Pyra, Ouya, Steam Machines, ...

~~~
meheleventyone
I didn't say it would be a success. I was disputing the comparison.

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thesmok
They never show the back panel with all the connectors, but on this blurry
image
[https://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2017/09/2194981...](https://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2017/09/21949812_358672201237369_2195478430542396093_o.jpg?w=738)
it looks like the device is powered by an external power brick, which is a no
go for me. Using external PSU for a stationary device is just lazy
engineering.

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mbrodersen
This will crash and burn. You need a _massive_ marketing budget to even
_begin_ to compete with Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft. And professional game
developers will not support a platform without a large customer base.

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ConfucianNardin
Official site: [https://www.ataribox.com/](https://www.ataribox.com/)

------
gourou
When was the last time Atari made hardware?

~~~
hnlmorg
This isn't the same company as the one that made the 2600. In fact the Atari
trademark has been held by so many different companies over the years that it
probably makes more sense at this point to class new hardware as "Atari
branded" rather than "Atari".

~~~
phjesusthatguy3
Infogrames, to be exact. They of Alone in the Dark and... that's the only game
I can come up with at the moment.

~~~
hnlmorg
The thing with Infogrames is a lot of their catalogue is down to publishing
and buyouts (like the Unreal Tournament franchise) rather than developed in
house. But one of their own games I do own and still occasionally enjoy is
Wacky Races on the Dreamcast.

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awill
As a Linux desktop user that uses Steam, I hope they're at least moderately
successful.

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sparkpeasy
That they've nailed down a price point yet haven't defined the exact GPU
beyond saying it's a Radeon makes the whole enterprise very suspect.

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spinchange
Is this an x86 device? Are there any other consoles or STBs (anymore) in the
market that are? Strange product positioning...

~~~
digi_owl
Just about every major console is, besides the Switch.

Both the PS4 and XbOne runs on a AMD supplied APU, that in turn is using the
x86-64 ISA.

~~~
spinchange
Now, I feel foolish - I thought both those consoles ran on RISC chips. (I know
that Xbox used to be an x86, but thought that had changed). Admittedly not a
gamer or HW gamer buff, my kids are.

~~~
digi_owl
The PS3 used the Cell, that was a PowerPC accompanies with 8(?) more
specialized cores (in hindsight i dare say they were used like oversized DSPs)
on a single die.

The hope was that the PS3 would be a test bed, and that the Cell would be
popular in supercomputers. I am not sure if that panned out beyond some images
of PS3s being piled into racks.

And the Xbox 360 i think was a 3 core PowerPC design.

Looking back at it i wonder if the reason both Sony and Microsoft went with
AMD APUs this time round is that AMD brought ATI. And ATI has a history of
building graphics hardware for games consoles.

Offering up both parts as a single die would greatly simplify the board design
of the new consoles. Never mind that by using x86 for the CPU there would be
no cross-complication complications to deal with.

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reiichiroh
Ataribox will be a failure or not launch at all.

~~~
mindcrime
Define "failure"?

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thedonkeycometh
Maybe they're holding out for a steam compatibility badge.

