Sooo, there's no thread about this. But Atari has announced they are making a new console, and it's been generating a bit of hype in some circles. I'm curious to hear what you think, especially as I'm sure many won't share my perspective.
I personally don't want Atari to make a comeback. To begin with the company has changed hands so many times it's not even the same business anymore. It's just been a logo kicked around to various groups trying to cash in on the ancient past. Now I love older video games going back to the early 80's, so this isn't about me not liking retro stuff. But what do I associate Atari with? I associate it with the video game crash, where they were pumping out so much shovel-ware trying to ride the waves of their success that they killed the industry.
When Nintendo came out they were afraid of being seen as what Atari was, so they made their system more like a VCR in design and advertised it as an "Entertainment System" for the home and family with accessories. They also make a big deal about the Nintendo seal of quality, trying to get faith back to consumers. Sure there were still crappy games on the NES, but at least they had to pay a licensing fee, that's not much, but it's better than nothing. Anyway the point is that because of Atari, it was very hard for Nintendo to enter the market and bring back gaming.
There is also talk about how powerful a system it might be. As if because they had the name Atari they were still limited to 70's tech?? Of course they'll go for the latest tech, don't be silly. Is it really that hard to assemble a powerful console today? It's getting really hard for me to tell the new generation from the last because the visual updates are so minor. Size and performance speed is really the only issue left as far as the system goes.
So in short, I'm not amazed or impressed to see them come back and I really don't care. For me Atari blew it back before the NES, and their next attempts to return with systems like the Jaguar just made them look even more like washed out has-beens trying to cling on to other people's success.
I have to admit the new company using this old logo could have better business practices, but really why would they want to associate themselves with the Atari name? It's not an attractive brand if you ask me.