SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Atari VCS Lead Architect Quits, Claims Six Months of Design Work Went Unpaid:
A key member of the Atari VCS project has quit the team, claiming Atari has not paid him for his work in six months. And by key member, we are talking about Rob Wyatt, the lead architect of the Atari VCS. From the outside looking in, Wyatt's departure is seemingly a big blow to a project that has seen multiple delays.
Wyatt is an industry veteran who also helped design and launch the original Xbox console. He joined the Atari VCS team in June 2018, with Atari at the time promoting his expertise and resume in GPU hardware and 3D graphics.
"While at Microsoft, Wyatt held roles on the development teams on DirectX and the Windows kernel before becoming the system architect of the original Xbox game console. Wyatt later contributed to the graphics systems of the PlayStation 3 before moving on to become the graphics architect at Magic Leap, an augmented reality startup. Along the way, he has also lent his expertise to many AAA video games and high-end movie special effects," Atari stated in a press release announcing its hiring of Wyatt.
[...]"Atari haven't paid invoices going back over six months. As a small company, we have been lucky to survive this long," Wyatt told The Register. "I was hoping to see the project through to the end and that it wouldn't come to this, but I have little choice other than to pursue other opportunities."
The Atari VCS raised million dollars through a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo, and has also collected money through preorders on its website, Walmart, and GameStop. Earlier this week, Atari showed off a pre-production motherboard with a Ryzen APU installed, and prior to that, it announced a partnership with Antstream Arcade to bring thousands of retro games to the Atari VCS through a subscription model.
According to Atari, the retro console is still on track to release next year, despite the departure of Wyatt.
Any ideas of why the project is running late? Going too far past the "minimal viable product" stage? I'm just a bit surprised that he worked six months without payment.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by VLM on Friday October 11 2019, @11:26AM (3 children)
For decades now the FOSS emulator community has captured everyone interested in Atari games and worked for free. Admittedly the roms are "illegal"-ish. The innovation for this proposed product was paying a subscription to get a license for a thousand or so old roms from the early 80s, which personally sounds a little ridiculous to me. Whats the point of bespoke 2020 era hardware to run a 2000 era emulation task to emulate a 1980 game? The joystick hardware interface is not what takes a "Ryzen(tm) APU".
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @11:41AM
problem is that modern games are shit.
games on tapes were fun.
modern games? i liked rochard. i like the rebooted abe's odyssey. i liked psychonauts. but otherwise... with apologies to half-life, 3D shooters are more or less all the same. and no, I did not mention car or "sports" games.
games on tapes were all different and people actually thought about the content.
and the ideas worked fine without fancy graphics.
by the way, you can find supaplex online for free.
(Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Friday October 11 2019, @12:01PM (1 child)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_VCS_(2019_console) [wikipedia.org]
You only need up to about 2 GB of memory in a LibreELEC, FireOS, Roki, etc. entertainment system. Less for emulating systems up to and including the Atari Jaguar, which had a whopping 2 MB of RAM.
The Raven Ridge APU was also an overkill choice, but x86 might offer more flexibility. They could offer not just original Atari console games that require barely any performance to run, but also games owned by Atari, SA [wikipedia.org], which has been operating to this day. That includes newer titles like Rollercoaster Tycoon. It's hard to say what else because they sold off properties around the time of their bankruptcy. They can run the stuff in Wine. They could also include other emulators. There are games for Game Boy Color and other systems under the Infogrames brand owned by Atari.
They didn't want to stay in the retro lane. In the years this thing has been in development, the market has been flooded with retro consoles and streaming boxes/sticks. The retro consoles typically include a weak ARM chip, emulator, and GUI to run bundled games from a single old console. What they are selling is more of a Linux PC gaming "console" that does the stuff that is already expected of any major console or smart TV.
It is basically a Linux Steam Machine [wikipedia.org], made by a smaller company.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by driverless on Sunday October 13 2019, @01:26AM
That's the problem with the VCS, it doesn't know what it wants to be. Is it a modern version of the 2600, which you could do with any random SBC and some emulation software, or a gaming PC, which you could do with any random gaming PC. What they're making is a so-so gaming PC sold as a staggeringly overpriced 2600 emulator. Even the most diehard 2600 fan would have a hard time justifying paying for that...
It looks like the VCS folks got caught in an escalation trap, they figured they could sell maybe a few thousand pure 2600 emulators to diehard fans and tried to expand it into something with more popular appeal that would get sales from a wider consumer base. Problem is that they're now competing with the PS and XBox, which isn't something where a few enthusiasts with a bit of donated funding can get anywhere.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday October 11 2019, @11:31AM (2 children)
The wikipedia article is pretty interesting
Not really sure how a Ryzen(tm) APU fits in with being gay (perhaps a dildo shaped heatsink to pander to the rainbow types? God knows what the joystick handle will look like.) or illegal internet gambling (coinslot on the front?
a CC magnetic stripe reader for billing?), but whatevs. Maybe this implies they changed marketing strategy yet again?
(Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Friday October 11 2019, @12:12PM (1 child)
I saw that when I was reading one of the articles (there are too many Atari Wikipedia pages). 2014 is an eternity ago for this company and that statement has everything to do with finding their footing after bankruptcy and nothing to do with their new console which was announced in 2017. They mentioned YouTube and LGBT because (they believed) those were hip at the time, same with "social casinos" [thebalanceeveryday.com].
Here's something more funny:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_VCS_(2019_console) [wikipedia.org]
His time at Atari started after The Register trashed the console, and he gave his statement to The Register after he left. And now Atari is in damage control mode. Well, at least they're not Blizzard.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday October 11 2019, @06:33PM
... another one bites the dust ...
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by Rupert Pupnick on Friday October 11 2019, @12:28PM (1 child)
Crap. Does this mean no Space Dungeon?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2019, @12:32PM
https://www.emuparadise.me/Atari_5200_ROMs/Space_Dungeon_(1983)_(Atari)/91795 [emuparadise.me]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Friday October 11 2019, @12:49PM (2 children)
I've been screwed out of my pay 3 times by employers. They were edgy startups that ran out of money. When pressed. they would whine that actually, we unpaid contractors should feel sorry for them that the business was not going well, rather than sorry for ourselves. What's a little being kicked out of your apartment for not paying the rent next to the agonizing end of a glorious dream due to such a sordid thing as a lack of funding? If you all would just keep working for us for free, for just a little longer, just one more month, or maybe two more (or three, or, heck 6 more months), we can finish this great work, or at least turn the corner, and then we'll all be rich. After all, the founders are working for free, haven't paid themselves a dime. So why can't you, huh?
Edgy startups pull that crap all the time. You really have to watch them. But don't think that big and established means you're safe. How about hourly workers being forced to work off the clock? First you clock out, then you do the end-of-the-day clean up, see. And in the morning before you clock in, there are a few little things we expect you to do. How about the likes Enron forcing their employees to invest their retirement funds in the company? Shame that was all vaporized when the company tanked, but that's life, ya know? Pension plans are perpetually in peril. Whatever happened to "9 to 5", how did that become "8 to 5"? Companies gave themselves a free lunch, that's how.
Employment laws need to be better enforced. But right now, we have one of the worst cheaters of employees and contractors in the highest office.
(Score: 2) by Rupert Pupnick on Friday October 11 2019, @06:02PM (1 child)
Great stories +1. Young, up and coming techies: take heed.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday October 11 2019, @06:49PM
This can be a very dirty business. It attracts wannabe businessmen of the "fake it 'til you make it" ilk, and things go south when they believe their own bullshit.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.