Atari VCS architect quits the project; claims he hasn't been paid for six months

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Derangel

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Rob Wyatt, architect for the VCS and one of the original Xbox designers, quit the VCS project as of Oct. 4th. He claimed that Atari has not been paying his firm, Tin Giant, for the past six months. Tin Giant was in the process of debugging the prototype board Atari showed off last month before they decided to walk away.

Assuming they are still working on the system (they didn't respond to The Register's requests for a comment), work on the board will likely fall to SurfaceInk. However, if Atari isn't paying firms it may only be a matter of time before SurfaceInk calls it quits as well.

The non-payment may be related to Atari's current financial situation, which is pretty bad. The company only has three employees and it has lost over $5m in the last two years. The claim to have just under $6m left as of April. Despite this their CEO is still paid $1.1m a year. Atari, also, did not respond to questions the article's author sent.

The article has some other information on what might be going on with the VCS, but since it all under the banner of "anonymous sources" I'm not going to spend time talking about all of it here, but I do recommend that people read the entire article to see what those sources claim.
 
Don't give them a dime of your money until the final hardware ships. There's a long list of failed video game PC kick starters, because it's easy to make your pitch, but hard to make it all work.

If anything, the more promotion a project receives, the less likely it is to ever ship. Just see the perpetually-delayed and still not shipping Smach Z

In my mind, if you have to spend that kind of time and money on promotion, it doesn't leave much left for the product.
 
I hadn't heard of this before. At first I thought it was a "mini" console like the Nintendo, Sony & Sega offerings. But after reading what they are trying to accomplish, I think it would have had a better chance at success had it just been a mini retro console. What they are trying to do with this thing as far as being a modern game console, I just don't think it is gonna work. Way too tough of a market to break in to today.

Reminds me of like what the Ouya tried to do.
 
It certainly has had my interest, and what they have been promising for the price is reasonable. But if they can't make it come out, I'm glad I didn't pre-order. The specs have already changed once due to the long time it has taken to get out.
 
Yeah, they are trying to cash in on the console nostalgia success that the nes/snes mini has had, with a console that as far as I know has no nostalgia value.

Atari console - shitty old games that might as well have been what, 4bit?

NES console - good, memorable games that had personality and were fun: Legend of Zelda, Super Mario Bros, etc.

As far as it being a "media center", xbox already does this very well. I don't want or need another device for that function.
 
Updated to add
Atari's PR firm, ÜberStrategist Inc, sent us the following message.

"Atari wishes to inform you that some of your questions indicate that you possess information that is incorrect and/or outdated. In addition, some aspects of the Atari VCS project clearly have been leaked to you in violation of existing confidentiality agreements, and Atari therefore hereby reserves its rights in that respect."
Click to expand...

LOL. They would have been better off just not responding. Atari, Fire your PR firm if you are trying to cut costs so hard.
 
GoodBoy said:
Yeah, they are trying to cash in on the console nostalgia success that the nes/snes mini has had, with a console that as far as I know has no nostalgia value.

Atari console - shitty old games that might as well have been what, 4bit?

NES console - good, memorable games that had personality and were fun: Legend of Zelda, Super Mario Bros, etc.

As far as it being a "media center", xbox already does this very well. I don't want or need another device for that function.
Click to expand...


The C64 was an 8-bit computer and was extremely popular in the 80s. This was the first home computer for millions.
 
westrock2000 said:
I hadn't heard of this before. At first I thought it was a "mini" console like the Nintendo, Sony & Sega offerings. But after reading what they are trying to accomplish, I think it would have had a better chance at success had it just been a mini retro console. What they are trying to do with this thing as far as being a modern game console, I just don't think it is gonna work. Way too tough of a market to break in to today.

Reminds me of like what the Ouya tried to do.
Click to expand...
At least one thing Ouya has going for, it actually shipped a product.
 
Derangel said:
Source

Rob Wyatt, architect for the VCS and one of the original Xbox designers, quit the VCS project as of Oct. 4th. He claimed that Atari has not been paying his firm, Tin Giant, for the past six months. Tin Giant was in the process of debugging the prototype board Atari showed off last month before they decided to walk away.

Assuming they are still working on the system (they didn't respond to The Register's requests for a comment), work on the board will likely fall to SurfaceInk. However, if Atari isn't paying firms it may only be a matter of time before SurfaceInk calls it quits as well.

The non-payment may be related to Atari's current financial situation, which is pretty bad. The company only has three employees and it has lost over $5m in the last two years. The claim to have just under $6m left as of April. Despite this their CEO is still paid $1.1m a year. Atari, also, did not respond to questions the article's author sent.

The article has some other information on what might be going on with the VCS, but since it all under the banner of "anonymous sources" I'm not going to spend time talking about all of it here, but I do recommend that people read the entire article to see what those sources claim.
Click to expand...
6m sounds like 3 years more for the CEO with bonuses.
 
Kardonxt said:
LOL. They would have been better off just not responding. Atari, Fire your PR firm if you are trying to cut costs so hard.
Click to expand...

Oof. They should have just given a “no comment” response or said that they can’t confirm or deny due to confidentiality agreements. Would have made them look a lot better than that statement.
 
GoodBoy said:
But the Atari VCS =! Commodore64... Atari had mostly crummy games. Commodore had all sorts of cool software for the time.
Click to expand...

I agree. I remember being excited playing Atari at my buddy's house when nothing else existed. But even then we realized how awful many games were. As soon as NES came along, the Atari was put away forever.

NES, C64 and even some VIC-20 games are still playable today. Atari? Not so much. Defender and Pitfall are cool for about 5 minutes and then I can't stand it anymore. And I love old things.
 
I like the article I read somewhere which referred to as all even semi-recent Atari incarnations as "The beast that wears Atari's clothes".

As a longtime fan of their classic stuff, it seems fitting, and sad.
 
GoodBoy said:
But the Atari VCS =! Commodore64... Atari had mostly crummy games. Commodore had all sorts of cool software for the time.
Click to expand...

One of the reasons for that is the VCS had much less ram available, and less rom too. It couldn't handle anywhere near the complexity.
 
VIC-20 said:
I agree. I remember being excited playing Atari at my buddy's house when nothing else existed. But even then we realized how awful many games were. As soon as NES came along, the Atari was put away forever.
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I hope so, the NES came to USA nearly a decade after the Atari. I was a kid in this Era. I wanted an Atari, but it wasn't in the cards, then later one of my neighbors got an Intellivision. I remember commercials comparing how much better Intellivision was than Atari. A little bit after that, I saved up enough for my first console. I got a Colecovision, which put both to shame. Then the Video game collapse came, and it was only after the collapse that Nintendo arrived.

By then me and my friends had moved on to the Commodore 64 and Nintendo really seemed aimed at "kids". ;)
 
GoodBoy said:
Yeah, they are trying to cash in on the console nostalgia success that the nes/snes mini has had, with a console that as far as I know has no nostalgia value.
Click to expand...

Are you serious? The Atari 2600 started it all, and those of us who were kids in that era have very fond memories of the console and games.

Comparing the 2600 to the NES is ridiculous since the NES arrived nearly a decade later in the US.
 
Snowdog said:
I hope so, the NES came to USA nearly a decade after the Atari. I was a kid in this Era. I wanted an Atari, but it wasn't in the cards, then later one of my neighbors got an Intellivision. I remember commercials comparing how much better Intellivision was than Atari. A little bit after that, I saved up enough for my first console. I got a Colecovision, which put both to shame. Then the Video game collapse came, and it was only after the collapse that Nintendo arrived.

By then me and my friends had moved on to the Commodore 64 and Nintendo really seemed aimed at "kids". ;)
Click to expand...

You nailed it - it is silly to compare the Atari 2600 to an NES. If you want to compare the NES to something, try comparing it to the C64 - the C64 slaps it senseless.
 
IndyColtsFan said:
Are you serious? The Atari 2600 started it all, and those of us who were kids in that era have very fond memories of the console and games.

Comparing the 2600 to the NES is ridiculous since the NES arrived nearly a decade later in the US.
Click to expand...
That's true, the Atari 2600 was released in 1977, the Famicom was released in 1983 in Japan, and the NES (US Famicom) was released in 1985.
Back then, that was a massive difference for ROM, RAM, and the VPU/PPU capabilities between 1977 and 1983/85.
 
Red Falcon said:
That's true, the Atari 2600 was released in 1977, the Famicom was released in 1983 in Japan, and the NES (US Famicom) was released in 1985.
Back then, that was a massive difference for ROM, RAM, and the VPU/PPU capabilities between 1977 and 1983/85.
Click to expand...

Just think - we went from Atari 2600 graphics to Amiga graphics within 8 years. That’s pretty astonishing.
 
longblock454 said:
And disappointing at the same time, if not for better Commodore management.......
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I know, it was so sad to watch that debacle unfold. I’ll never forget seeing the Amiga the first time - I have never been so blown away by technology as I was on that day.

I have 2 Amigas sitting in my closet, which I upgraded and refurbished a few years ago. I really need to get them out again.
 
IndyColtsFan said:
I know, it was so sad to watch that debacle unfold. I’ll never forget seeing the Amiga the first time - I have never been so blown away by technology as I was on that day.

I have 2 Amigas sitting in my closet, which I upgraded and refurbished a few years ago. I really need to get them out again.
Click to expand...

Same here, but I only have one Amiga in a box. An Amiga 1000. Of the old computers I had over the years, it seemed too special to part with.
 
IndyColtsFan said:
If you want to compare the NES to something, try comparing it to the C64 - the C64 slaps it senseless.
Click to expand...


Says the man who doesn't actually understand the hardware limits of the two systems.

The C64 high res mode has similar color limitations to the Apple II's high-res mode, with 10 more colors to choose from. This produced similar looking games on a single background color:

trapdoor.gif


Looks much better than the Apple II, but then it should after 5 years.

The VIC II has to cut the resolution in half to 160x200 to get better-looking colors, but as a result the graphics look chunkier, and the resolution drop is noticeable. Just look at this crappy port of Ikari Warriors.

ikari_warriors_05.gif


That plus the lack of hardware smooth scrolling meant the system did not keep up with the competition as the system aged.

The NES's PPU rolls all over this shit. It runs at 256x224 no matter what the game, and displays 50% more colors onscreen, from a palette three times larger, while supporting hardware smooth scrolling in either direction.

A game with color on-black like Trap Door, only better, from the same year:

312628-metroid-nes-screenshot-the-battle-against-the-mother-brain.png


The much better graphics of the Ikari Warriors Port:

Ikari-Warriors-USA_031_256x224.png



And while SID is a true programmable synth, it only has three channels. It's hard work faking 4 channels of sound on the C64, and takes extra effort.

And oh yeah, that extra fifth PCM channel is higher fidelity than bit-banging 4-bit sound out of the SID.



The only way the C64 kicks the NES's ass is in how quickly it ended up in the garbage bin. After waiting UP TO TEN MINUITES for a game to load, it really sucked for user experience.

The only issue I ever had with the NES was the NES10 green flashing, but you could work around this by using Game Genie. You couldn't easily work around the C64 1541 alignment issue. ruining your day.
 
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defaultluser said:
Says the man who doesn't actually understand the hardware limits of the two systems.

The C64 high res mode has similar color limitations to the Apple II's high-res mode, with 10 more colors to choose from. This produced similar looking games on a single background color:

View attachment 191802

Looks much better than the Apple II, but then it should after 5 years.

The VIC II has to cut the resolution in half to 160x200 to get better-looking colors, but as a result the graphics look chunkier, and the resolution drop is noticeable. Just look at this crappy port of Ikari Warriors.

View attachment 191803

That plus the lack of hardware smooth scrolling meant the system did not keep up with the competition as the system aged.

The NES's PPU rolls all over this shit. It runs at 256x224 no matter what the game, and displays 50% more colors onscreen, from a palette three times larger, while supporting hardware smooth scrolling in either direction.

A game with color on-black like Trap Door, only better, from the same year:

View attachment 191804

The much better graphics of the Ikari Warriors Port:

View attachment 191805


And while SID is a true programmable synth, it only has three channels. It's hard work faking 4 channels of sound on the C64, and takes extra effort.

And oh yeah, that extra fifth PCM channel is higher fidelity than bit-banging 4-bit sound out of the SID.



The only way the C64 kicks the NES's ass is in how quickly it ended up in the garbage bin. After waiting UP TO TEN MINUITES for a game to load, it really sucked for user experience.

The only issue I ever had with the NES was the NES10 green flashing, but you could work around this by using Game Genie. You couldn't easily work around the C64 1541 alignment issue. ruining your day.
Click to expand...



1. My original, 1984 1541 still works great. Never had a single issue with any of my drives. I never recall having to wait 10 minutes for a game to load even from the slow 1541. On a side note, I pulled a bunch of old disks from my garage and tried loading games just to see how much the media had degraded and surprisingly, in my quick survey, only one disk was dead. I was pretty shocked given that the media was 30+ years old and hasn’t been stored in the best of conditions.

2. By the time the NES hit stride in the US, people were replacing their C64s with other machines and the Amiga was available.

3. The Nintendo was only a game console, whereas the C64 had much more capability.
 
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defaultluser said:
Says the man who doesn't actually understand the hardware limits of the two systems.

The C64 high res mode has similar color limitations to the Apple II's high-res mode, with 10 more colors to choose from. This produced similar looking games on a single background color:

View attachment 191802

Looks much better than the Apple II, but then it should after 5 years.

The VIC II has to cut the resolution in half to 160x200 to get better-looking colors, but as a result the graphics look chunkier, and the resolution drop is noticeable. Just look at this crappy port of Ikari Warriors.

View attachment 191803

That plus the lack of hardware smooth scrolling meant the system did not keep up with the competition as the system aged.

The NES's PPU rolls all over this shit. It runs at 256x224 no matter what the game, and displays 50% more colors onscreen, from a palette three times larger, while supporting hardware smooth scrolling in either direction.

A game with color on-black like Trap Door, only better, from the same year:

View attachment 191804

The much better graphics of the Ikari Warriors Port:

View attachment 191805


And while SID is a true programmable synth, it only has three channels. It's hard work faking 4 channels of sound on the C64, and takes extra effort.

And oh yeah, that extra fifth PCM channel is higher fidelity than bit-banging 4-bit sound out of the SID.



The only way the C64 kicks the NES's ass is in how quickly it ended up in the garbage bin. After waiting UP TO TEN MINUITES for a game to load, it really sucked for user experience.

The only issue I ever had with the NES was the NES10 green flashing, but you could work around this by using Game Genie. You couldn't easily work around the C64 1541 alignment issue. ruining your day.
Click to expand...



While I wouldn't argue that C64 had a visual edge over NES, I would be interested in a Sound comparison. NES had one more channel but the SID chip was extremely versatile.

But really what the C64 had over the NES was depth of games that far outweigh any technical edge on graphics. One of the big reasons I made the Jump to the C64 was to play text adventures, like Zork. Just a non starter on a console.

As far as slow loading, I played an Early First person RPG called Oubliette on C64. Now that was SLOW to load, because at first all I had was a tape drive. It took about half an hour to load. When I got a 1541 drive that was a huge speed up nothing ever took 10 minutes on floppy, and not long after some techniques for "Fast Loading" were discovered, which made the 1541 load extremely fast.

There was never any thought given to missing anything from the NES when I had a C64, as the C64 gaming library had massive breadth and depth, and enabled experiences not possible on the NES.
 
Snowdog said:
While I wouldn't argue that C64 had a visual edge over NES, I would be interested in a Sound comparison. NES had one more channel but the SID chip was extremely versatile.

But really what the C64 had over the NES was depth of games that far outweigh any technical edge on graphics. One of the big reasons I made the Jump to the C64 was to play text adventures, like Zork. Just a non starter on a console.

As far as slow loading, I played an Early First person RPG called Oubliette on C64. Now that was SLOW to load, because at first all I had was a tape drive. It took about half an hour to load. When I got a 1541 drive that was a huge speed up nothing ever took 10 minutes on floppy, and not long after some techniques for "Fast Loading" were discovered, which made the 1541 load extremely fast.

There was never any thought given to missing anything from the NES when I had a C64, as the C64 gaming library had massive breadth and depth, and enabled experiences not possible on the NES.
Click to expand...

I remember going from a C2N datasette to the 1541 - I couldn't believe the blazing speed. With the C2N, you could start loading and literally go fix a small meal (and maybe even eat it!) before it was done loading. The 1541 was more like 1 or 2 minutes for most game with the occasional short splash screen to load more data.

The depth of the games the C64 had, plus all the other software and abilities put it way ahead of the NES IMO, but it's probably an unfair comparison. I remember back in the 80s, I did enjoy a few Nintendo games with friends (I didn't own one), but I ultimately viewed it as more of a toy compared to my C64. And in 1987, the Amiga 500 was released and upped the ante even more.
 
Snowdog said:
While I wouldn't argue that C64 had a visual edge over NES, I would be interested in a Sound comparison. NES had one more channel but the SID chip was extremely versatile.

But really what the C64 had over the NES was depth of games that far outweigh any technical edge on graphics. One of the big reasons I made the Jump to the C64 was to play text adventures, like Zork. Just a non starter on a console.
Click to expand...


But Text Adventures were a dying breed by the time the system launched, just look at how popular SSI Gold Box and Ultima were in their day. Sorry man, but you were a dying breed.

And all the popular graphical computer RPGs had ports to the NES, so we weren't missing anything. Ultima III and IV plus Pool of Radiance and Ys come to mind.

And then you had exclusive RPG/adventure games like The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Crystalis to give more depth to the console-based RPG.

And while the 1541 reduced loading times significantly, don't pretend like it was a cheap add-on. IT cost almost as much as the computer did.

I never had to pay $400 on release to make my NES load games faster, on top of the money you already spent on the datasette reader (you had to have both, if you wanted to read all games available) :rolleyes:

And you folks want to whip oit the Amiga A500 card, while ignoring that that was getting creamed by the Sega Mega Drive within a year? There's a reason the Commodore Corporation kept losing money: gamers wanted to pay consokle prices to get theri gaming on , and didn't much care about the productivity apps.

The A500 was over three times the price of a launch day Mega Drive, and you didn't have to pay several hundred dollars for the monitor. By the time the lower price of the A500 actually sparked a games development community (early 1990s), the Mega Drive had already sold tens of millions of units, and the SNES wasn't far behind, and Commodore was a dead man walking
 
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GoodBoy said:
But the Atari VCS =! Commodore64... Atari had mostly crummy games. Commodore had all sorts of cool software for the time.
Click to expand...

I can remember getting an Atari 2600 as a kid, you might think they suck now, but in the late 1970's, they were amazing. The C64 wasn't released until the early 80's and was not something most people were comfortable with, with an Atari, you plugged in a cart and turned it on, with a C64 you had to type in all these weird commands and if you didn't get it right, nothing happened. Hell, most people still had rotary dial phones in the home when the C64 was released. You could do some amazing things on the C64, I still remember beating Ultima III on it. Yes, the Atari sucked compared to the c64, but they were in entirely different classes. You are correct though, the old Atari games don't really hold up well these days for the most part, it's really just a nostalgia thing for most people.
 
defaultluser said:
But Text Adventures were a dying breed by the time the system launched, just look at how popular SSI Gold Box and Ultima were in their day. Sorry man, but you were a dying breed.

And all the popular graphical computer RPGs had ports to the NES, so we weren't missing anything. Ultima III and IV plus Pool of Radiance and Ys come to mind.

And then you had exclusive RPG/adventure games like The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Crystalis to give more depth to the console-based RPG.

And while the 1541 reduced loading times significantly, don't pretend like it was a cheap add-on. IT cost almost as much as the computer did.

I never had to pay $400 on release to make my NES load games faster :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Maybe you are unaware, but the C-64 had a catridge slot and games were available on cartridge. Computer = versatility.

I can understand why a console gamer would be unaware, but text adventures were enormously popular in the '80s. Infocom was the king of Text Adventures and they peaked AFTER the C64 launched, so were not a dying breed when the C64 launched:

https://www.filfre.net/2013/03/the-top-of-its-game/
"..the continuing success of Zork I baffled even Infocom. It had increased its sales astronomically for every year on the market, approaching 100,000 all by itself in 1983, and sales would jump by more than 50% yet again in 1984."

1983 Gaming sales chart:
softsel.jpg
 
Good memories playing on my grandpa's 2600. Missile Command, Double Dragon, Q-Bert, and Pac Man Jr being some of my earliest, and most enjoyable, gaming experiences.
 
Snowdog said:
Maybe you are unaware, but the C-64 had a catridge slot and games were available on cartridge. Computer = versatility.

I can understand why a console gamer would be unaware, but text adventures were enormously popular in the '80s. Infocom was the king of Text Adventures and they peaked AFTER the C64 launched, so were not a dying breed when the C64 launched:

https://www.filfre.net/2013/03/the-top-of-its-game/
"..the continuing success of Zork I baffled even Infocom. It had increased its sales astronomically for every year on the market, approaching 100,000 all by itself in 1983, and sales would jump by more than 50% yet again in 1984."

1983 Gaming sales chart:
View attachment 191871
Click to expand...

Wow, Telengard, the hours I wasted on that....
 
motomonkey said:
with a C64 you had to type in all these weird commands and if you didn't get it right, nothing happened.
Click to expand...
Heh. The initial frustration with those commands may be what hooked me though. At 8 years old trying to load a typing tutor, instructions said LOAD "PROGRAM NAME",8,1 and I kept typing it over and over, until it finally clicked that (program name) was implied, not literal. I think my subsequent decades of computing were shaped or at least sparked by that one moment.
 
Snowdog said:
Maybe you are unaware, but the C-64 had a catridge slot and games were available on cartridge. Computer = versatility.
Click to expand...

It's true- it was used before there was a 3rd-party dev market for the thing. But by then the lead times for carts were so much longer than magnetic media, the carts in C64 were completely unused within three years.

Versatility also means that the directions keep changing, and you have to follow the leader. When the games market leads to a faster-to-market system, you have to follow and pay up. Such is life gaming on a computer (versus a console) in the 80s

That means you still have to buy a cassette and floppy drive to get the most life out of your C64 system, even if you were only using it for games.

Nintendo didn't release the Famicom Disk System here because they knew it was a kludge that wouldn't work in the US. It just meant we had to wait a year for complex games like Zelda to fit on a cartridge. Given the longevity of the rest of the system's specs, it was worth the wait.
.
 
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defaultluser said:
It's true- it was used before there was a 3rd-party dev market for the thing. But by then the lead times for carts were so much longer than magnetic media, the carts in C64 were completely unused within three years.

Versatility also means that the directions keep changing, and you have to follow the leader. When the games market leads to a faster-to-market system, you have to follow and pay up. Such is life gaming on a computer (versus a console) in the 80s

That means you still have to buy a cassette and floppy drive to get the most life out of your C64 system, even if you were only using it for games.

Nintendo didn't release the Famicom Disk System here because they knew it was a kludge that wouldn't work in the US. It just meant we had to wait a year for complex games like Zelda to fit on a cartridge. Given the longevity of the rest of the system's specs, it was worth the wait.
.
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You didn't need both a Floppy and Cassette. Most people probably never used their Cassette much, if ever after getting a Floppy. I expect most publishers went on both formats.
 
Snowdog said:
You didn't need both a Floppy and Cassette. Most people probably never used their Cassette much, if ever after getting a Floppy. I expect most publishers went on both formats.
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If you went with the flow of traffic, you started with cartridges then tape then disk. Nobody published on disk at first due to the higher costs, so early third-part was through tape.

IF you bought today, all you would need is disk, but that's not what I'm talking about. From birth to death, you had to have bought a cassette reader, then a disk drive.
 
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