Atari VCS, som en gang var kendt som Ataribox, har været undervejs ganske længe, og selvom årets GDC-messe bød på fremvisningen af en prototype, så har Atari endnu ikke vist en fungerende demonstration til nogen. Dette har hævet nogle øjenbryn, og én kilde beskylder nu konsollen for at være ét stort fupnummer.
Facebook-brugeren Curt Vendel har nemlig offentliggjort en længere besked på gruppen Atari Museum, hvor han fortæller om den maskine udviklerne havde med til GDC, og han citerer desuden intern kommunikation med holdet bag.
Her er et udpluk af hans længere advarsel til dem der meget snart skal til at forudbestille konsollen for flere tusinde kroner:
"Seems Atari is not only renamed its console, its renamed its Crowdfunding. So instead of using IndieGoGo... Atari plans to ahem.... start taking "Pre-Orders" (cough cough.... crowdfund)
So basically instead of going to Indiegogo, you'll go right to the Ataribox (vcs, scam.... whatever they are calling it this month...) and you will plop down your $249.99 happily and eagerly to "Pre-order" their snake oil, smoke and mirrors empty plastic box with pretty LED's on it and glued on USB and Network port on the back (yippie!!!) and then you will wait, and wait, and wait... and shades of Gameband will float through your head...
But but but... Feargal's not involved anymore (yeah, ummmm, a little birdie made a HUGE mistake in an email to me and accidentally tipped their hand.... more on that as time goes by and I'll make a HUGE reveal on the truth of that matter...)
So, let me forewarn you. If after all of the warnings you still want to blindly throw your money at a company who for nearly a year has shown absolutely NOTHING but a plastic box, a solid plastic mockup and oh, looky a joystick with pretty lights but the head of the project says he doesn't know if it works (yeah, that ignorance instills just soooooooooooo much confidence in wanting to plunk down my $$$ on it, not.) By now, any REAL developer would've had a buggy, messy prototype board to have at least shown, even if its chip was an older type and in final production they'd later use a next rev chip. They would've shown the joysticks working on the board and had it connected to a TV...
But that would mean that they actually had something, they haven't done ANYTHING other than say (ummm, Steam did it, so we'll do it) and ummm.... we'll use an AMD chip cause ummmm, well, people know who AMD is,right."
Tror du Vendel?