[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...

[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

[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.