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by wjoe 2447 days ago
As a small form factor PC capable of playing some games, it's a pretty good value offering. But that's only really appealing to tinkerers and hobbyists who want to set these things up to their liking.

I have a Linux PC hooked up to a TV in the living room for exactly these purposes (video/streaming and light gaming), thrown together from old parts and a bit of a mess to use. So a £300 device that does the same thing holds some appeal, even moreso if it had a developer behind it pushing some games on the platform, and making a good software experience. But it's not that, it's basically the same as that clunky PC I have in the living room running Linux, capable of playing games if you launch Steam or streaming whatever works in a browser.

I'm not their target audience though, and if I was then it'd be a pretty narrow niche to target.

It's amazing how much you can get away with when you have a recognised brand. They've combined the worst of over optimistic/under prepared kickstarters, with the worst of big corporation penny pinching. And yet just because people know the name Atari, they got millions of dollars in pre-orders, and even got Walmart and Best Buy to sell their (non-existent) device.

Edit: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/10/08/atari_architect_qui... is another article I read about this which I was basing some of my comments on - they apparently are planning on just releasing it running a generic Linux distro without any sort of console UI/ games launcher, and without any particular support for streaming platforms aside from a web browser.

1 comments

Also it’s $389! That’s crazy it doesn’t even have streaming