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Ataribox will be an open, Linux-based console priced starting at $249
- sacheendra 9y agoWhat is the point of a Linux based console? Traditional consoles had fixed hardware which could be exploited through vendor specific APIs. If this is just going to run games programmed with OpenGL, this is not different from any other Linux PC. Given the introduction of APIs like Vulkan which bings the programmability of PCs even closer to consoles, I don't see a use case. The only market I can think of the niche of Atari fans.
- kbenson 9y agoWell, throw steamOS on it and you have a cheap (cheapest?) steam machine. $249 is much more palatable than $400+, and it would likely play quite a few of the hundreds of Humble Bundle games I have in my library.
- sleepychu 9y agosteam link is probably a better fit for you then
- deftnerd 9y agoMy main workstation is powerful enough to play Steam games, and a Steam Link would allow me to stream them to my living room TV. Where that fails is when I have work to do on my desktop and my kids want to play games. To solve that, I had to build a dedicated living room PC. I didn't go nuts, so it ended up being about $500. If I could replace that with an handsome Linux powered gaming system for less than $300, then I think it's a no-brainer... especially if it can run third-party marketplaces and apps like Steam or Plex.
- eikenberry 9y agoWhy would you build a living room PC instead of building each child their own Personal Computer? Then they could hook it up to the Link if they wanted as it is their PC.
- Fnoord 9y agoBecause the child's personal computer resides in their room. This means less room (no pun intended) for control over active times, more costs involved because of computers not being shared, and also enforces the child to be excluded from social environment. It is a double edged sword. Both options have their pros and cons, and none is ideal.
- eikenberry 9y agoWhy would it be in their room. We have all our computers in one room, our family office. A shared, social environment.
- cat199 9y agoYou're right. This seems like a hard problem, esp. since OP is so emphatic that $300 is preferrable to $500. Let me see if I can figgure this out for us both. 1 child x $500 = $500 1-or-more x $500 = $500-or-more Oh! That must be it! This solution would be more expensive to implement, and therefore, since cost is a factor, this solution would be less preferable! Glad I took the time to work this one out, I certainly was very confused as well.
- eikenberry 9y agoMoney isn't always the primary factor.
- dkersten 9y agoWhat does the living room PC get used for? If just games/movies/music then what was the logic for getting that over a console? (PS4, XBox1, Switch are around the same price point or below) Just curious, not suggesting that a console would have been better.
- jpalomaki 9y agoI bought Steam Link. To my slight surprise the hardware worked fine and graphics were smooth (in wired LAN). Where it fell short was the overall experience. Most games are of course not designed for this. In PC you always have the keyboard, there are things that are tweaked through Windows. Also it felt that I had to regularly run to the PC to sort out some issue. Disclaimer: I tested just with few games and at least 6 months ago.
- beefsack 9y ago> Atari says it’ll offer a “full PC experience” for your TV I feel this is a significant part of the appeal.
- Feniks 9y agoWithout Windows?
- Sir_Cmpwn 9y agoOh, hush. Linux is perfectly capable of providing a full desktop PC experience. It's a great idea to land hackable Linux PCs in living rooms - most people are going to get everything they need from their web browser and the kids who dig a little further are introduced to the world of open source.
- Feniks 9y agoThe year of Linux.
- pjmlp 9y agoCheaper to develop for them as they don't have to develop an console OS from scratch.
- godzillabrennus 9y agoNot only that but if they partner with Steam they stand half of a chance at attracting more than Atari nerds who remember the 2600 fondly to purchase these.
- pjmlp 9y agoA quick Google search shows that the few surviving shops that still try to sell Steam Machines, do it at the comparable price or higher as Windows gaming rigs. So not sure if it would generate any considerable profit.
- nippples 9y ago> What is the point of a Linux based console? Let's break it down > What is the point of a console? Very predictable hardware specs & setup. > What is the point of the console being Linux-based? Reduction of brand-new OS development costs; potentially zero need for writing drivers depending on hardware setup; very extensive presence of compilers / interpreters / libraries that can be freely usable out of the box.
- Feniks 9y agoToo bad Linux still doesn't play nice with most games. SteamOS was a failure.
- pjc50 9y agoSteamOS is a "fleet in being", or nuclear deterrent. Its purpose is to make sure that Valve can survive if Windows decided they wanted to "Windows Store" their platform and force every game to pay Microsoft a 30% cut. Until Microsoft do that, it's not actually very necessary. But it might become necessary at short notice.
- loup-vaillant 9y agoDid you mean "Too bad most games still don't play nice with Linux"? If you didn't, what makes game development more difficult on Linux¹, compared to the alternatives²? [1]: More specifically, mainstream GNU/Linux distributions [2]: Windows and MacOS
- ido 9y agoOne thins is that Linux users often have suboptimal graphics drivers installed (probably cause the open source drivers tend to be incomplete/buggy and the official drivers from AMD/nvidia aren't installed by default on most linux distros). Another is that it's just generally a lot more heterogeneous than windows and mac (lots of different distros with variously up to date libraries, drivers, etc).
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- eloisant 9y agoThey can have it open while still have fixed hardware and vendor specific APIs (in addition to open apis commonly found in Linux).
- mtgx 9y agoIt may (should) use Vulkan, which should give closer to console performance, once developers know to target a specific Vulkan machine.
- Zardoz84 9y agoThe same that running a BSD or Windows based console.... Oh, wait! Playstation & Switch uses BSD and XBox runs a striped down Windows! - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_4_system_software https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_4_system_software - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Switch_system_software https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Switch_system_softwar... - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_One_system_software https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_One_system_software And add to the mix that Playstation and XBox actually are using PC hardware...
- boomboomsubban 9y agoI still haven't seen anything showing the Switch is using a FreeBSD kernel, just that the Switch ships with the licence from the kernel. That's all that any of the English Wikipedia references show, and a copy of that license doesn't prove much.
- Retr0spectrum 9y agoCorrect, FreeBSD code is only used in parts of the network stack.
- boomboomsubban 9y agoFrom what I can tell, that idea came from some HN users' guess when the licence matter was posted here.
- Retr0spectrum 9y agoThe Socket service on the switch is called bsd:u. That's a bit of a giveaway. IIRC if you use nmap's fingerprinting feature, it thinks the switch is running FreeBSD (i.e. the switch is definitely using the FreeBSD network stack) http://switchbrew.org/index.php?title=Sockets_services http://switchbrew.org/index.php?title=Sockets_services http://switchbrew.org/index.php?title=Services_API#Service_List http://switchbrew.org/index.php?title=Services_API#Service_L...
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- la_oveja 9y ago> If this is just going to run games programmed with OpenGL [...] dude, we're riding the Vulkan wave now!
- nikcub 9y ago> Traditional consoles had fixed hardware which could be exploited through vendor specific APIs. Atari know that - they tried it with the Jaguar
- shmerl 9y agoWhy not make it Linux based? Developing a new OS isn't something they want to do I assume. Leveraging Linux and established APIs (Vulkan / OpenGL) and etc. sounds like a pragmatic solution. "Traditional" consoles used lock-in not because it was good to do, but because they were either too weak and required very close to the hardware APIs (and no portable APIs like that existed), or because vendors were just lock-in inclined.
- SwellJoe 9y agoThe case is delicious. I can't tell anything about it from the article or the company website, so it's anyone's guess what this actually is. But, it sure does look pretty. That said, I worry that at the price point, it'll be a somewhat disappointing gaming experience compared to a general purpose PC with a decent GPU. Having a high-quality retro experience is cool and all (I hope they have arcade versions of the games, rather than the original VCS 2600 versions, as they were kinda awful), but it's been possible to emulate an Atari on modest hardware for a couple decades...I doubt I'd spend $250 for a pretty box that plays classic Atari games, even though I grew up on them.
- throwanem 9y agoI'll spend $250 for a nicely designed and well integrated Linux-based STB that happens to come with an Atari 2600 emulator preinstalled, though.
- radiorental 9y agoYou're paying $200 for a nice case and the 30 minutes you saved putting Kodi & Retro Pi on a $35 computer.
- nobleach 9y agoMaybe a bit off topic but, how is Kodi on a Pi at decoding high quality MKVs with DTS sound? I have a Retro Pi on a Raspberry Pi 3b, but haven't bothered putting Kodi on it as I have a Zotac Z-Box right next to it with optical outputs and all that jazz. Might be nice to consolidate.
- khedoros1 9y agoDepends on the video codec that the MKV contains. H.264 is handled with hardware decoding. H.265 apparently works in some limited cases, but I wouldn't count on it. VC-1 (WMV9) is supported for hardware decoding, after purchase of a separate license. The audio is all software-decoded, but I think it can be configured for passthrough directly to HDMI, for at least some formats.
- thedonkeycometh 9y agoMaybe they're holding out for a steam compatibility badge.
- taurath 9y agoMeanwhile Nintendo is selling the snes classic for $80 - that price point is glaring.
- meheleventyone 9y agoThe SNES Classic is locked down and only supports the games it ships with. That's not really comparable to an open console/computer that ships with a selection of old Atari games.
- pjmlp 9y agoYeah, because all Linux based games consoles have been a huge market success thus far. GP2X, Novatio, Pandora, Pyra, Ouya, Steam Machines, ...
- meheleventyone 9y agoI didn't say it would be a success. I was disputing the comparison.
- b3lvedere 9y agoRetroPie .. :)
- girvo 9y agoHey now, the GP32 and the GP2X were pretty successful in their niche: open handheld for gaming. Problem is, smartphones killed em for the most part. I still want a Dingoo A320 but they don’t make them anymore. Only Android based stuff.
- seba_dos1 9y agoI don't know Novatio, but out of the others, Ouya was pretty much the only one that flopped.
- taurath 9y agoA raspberry pi can play all the games this will ship with - why is it $250?
- SmellyGeekBoy 9y agoOoh, it's real wood! Even the original 2600 wasn't real wood.
- madshiva 9y agocrowd-funding at that price? where's the goal? PS4 slim are at almost the same price. I have a raspberry PI 3 for 50$ that do better.
- sliken 9y agoDepends. What can you PS4 do? Do you have to pay to make it a plex client? Chromecast to? Can you run vlc on it? Can it transcode? Can you run an opensource game on it? Run a decent browser on it? Steam? How about the collection of Classic Atari games? I've only have public knowledge of the Atari, but X86, cheap, and linux does open some rather interesting possibilities. I've yet to see a media player that does it better than Roku. If the Atari could be the roku of gaming it could be quite interesting, even if it doesn't have the latest/greatest $50-$100 game that the PS4 of Xbox has.
- criddell 9y ago> Do you have to pay to make it a plex client? Chromecast to? Can you run vlc on it? Can it transcode? Can you run an opensource game on it? Run a decent browser on it? Steam? How about the collection of Classic Atari games? There are probably hundreds of us!
- seba_dos1 9y agoI am totally not interested in what PS4 or Xbox has to offer and will probably get one only when the prospect of porting one of my games to those consoles will be good enough to justify it (and that'll need them in some devkit form probably anyway). On the other hand, I'm eagerly looking for more details about Ataribox. I only have a laptop(s) with Intel GPUs and I'm more and more in need of some device with stronger GPU with dedicated VRAM (mostly for testing, but occasional gaming with higher FPS would be nice too). I'm not keen on updating the laptop, as GPU is pretty much the only thing that would need to be replaced (and with Intel's worry-free open drivers stack, I actually like to have it on my main computer). I thought about building some cheap desktop just for those needs, but if Ataribox keeps on its promise of being so open, it might be just right (and cheaper) option for me. Atari emulator would then be just a nice bonus.
- jlebrech 9y agoI'd still prefer a Raspberry PI 3. if something that form factor could emulator Gamecube it would be perfect.
- gourou 9y agoWhen was the last time Atari made hardware?
- ido 9y agoEither the Jaguar CD[0] or Flashback[1], depending on how flexible you are with the "atari made" part. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Jaguar_CD https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Jaguar_CD [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Flashback https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Flashback
- hnlmorg 9y agoAt risk of splitting hairs, Atari Inc and Atari Corp were different companies as well. The 2600 was released by Atari Inc and the Jaguar by Atari Corp.
- hnlmorg 9y agoThis isn't the same company as the one that made the 2600. In fact the Atari trademark has been held by so many different companies over the years that it probably makes more sense at this point to class new hardware as "Atari branded" rather than "Atari".
- phjesusthatguy3 9y agoInfogrames, to be exact. They of Alone in the Dark and... that's the only game I can come up with at the moment.
- brightfog 9y agoWhat an brilliant continuation of an iconic design. I'll will just buy this because of its case.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- krige 9y agoYeah nah it's going to bomb. Ouya 2.0 but with a nostalgic brand attached. To actually sell in any worthwile amount a console NEEDS to have a proper developer support. And I mean BIG developer, not a bunch of indie studios porting their preexisting products to linux.
- mmjaa 9y agoFollowing the world of individual developers for years, I would have to disagree with you. If they can cover the basic users, i.e. get it shipping at profit, there's definitely a way to make this product work. Just look at the GP2X, GPH, GPD Pocket, Pyra Handheld, Open Pandora, Caanoo handhelds, for example .. the users are there.
- pjmlp 9y agoNot paying users you mean, mostly using the consoles to run some variation of MAME. This is why major studios mostly ignore GNU/Linux gamers, as many feel entitled to have nice stuff for free.
- boondaburrah 9y agoAs someone who got caught up in the OUYA craze, nah that's not why it bombed. A console will probably do fine with just indies. What will kill it is a company that continues to not fix problems, act like everything is "rock star awesome" all the time, and pretend like they're some buddy of yours instead of be responsible. OUYA just continued to piss me off by not even bothering to make sure their experience was good and brushing it off by doubling down on marketing on how cool they were. They slapped android on a Tegra and called it "good." At no point did they try to unify the controller api, yet they claimed to support multiple brands/types of controller. It was on the dev to map each one when they can't even predict every brand. I had controllers work in one game but not the next! That's unforgivable. Either handle an SDL2_Gamepad style mapping at the ENV/system level or just say you only support OUYA controllers. When they were getting complaints about overscan (ugh, why do we still need to deal with this (aside: holy crap iPhone X, not you too!)), they elected to just force-scale the UI down by an inch (memories of PS2) and again tell the devs to just deal with overscan themselves on a game-by-game basis. A good solution would have been to make overscan a system setting that the games could query ("oh, btw, your display area is actually 1900x1000, offset by 9px left, 25px down"). This pattern of "slap a fix on it, and then plug your ears and yell 'LALALA'" was what killed it, and probably all other attempts at an indie console for a while. Hopefully the world has forgotten the OUYA enough that this has a chance. I mean OUYA didn't even have a useful recovery partition COME ON.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- ConfucianNardin 9y agoOfficial site: https://www.ataribox.com/ https://www.ataribox.com/
- hoopism 9y agoTech websites need to stop giving these projects coverage. This is not Atari... Atari is gone. Slapping licensed games and selling a shiny box with common internals is not novel and will not somehow grow a magical following. Ouya was the best example but there's been dozens if not hundreds since. I know it's a content driven world but techcrunch, kotaku, polywhatever needs to stop.
- fhood 9y agoUnless you are Nintendo, In that case you will make bank.
- hoopism 9y agoNintendo is still Nintendo. It's the same company. Making hardware based on it's own IP. Many titles being their own in house produced work. Nostalgia works when it's genuine.
- fhood 9y agoFair enough, but that little box does have an Atari logo on it. How many people are going to look deeper than that?
- mindcrime 9y agoTech websites need to stop giving these projects coverage. Why? There are people who want to know about this kind of thing. This is not Atari... Atari is gone. So? Slapping licensed games and selling a shiny box with common internals is not novel and will not somehow grow a magical following. Why do you think it needs a "magical following"? Isn't it enough that there's market demand for this box and they are serving that demand?
- awill 9y agoAs a Linux desktop user that uses Steam, I hope they're at least moderately successful.
- spinchange 9y agoIs this an x86 device? Are there any other consoles or STBs (anymore) in the market that are? Strange product positioning...
- digi_owl 9y agoJust about every major console is, besides the Switch. Both the PS4 and XbOne runs on a AMD supplied APU, that in turn is using the x86-64 ISA.
- spinchange 9y agoNow, I feel foolish - I thought both those consoles ran on RISC chips. (I know that Xbox used to be an x86, but thought that had changed). Admittedly not a gamer or HW gamer buff, my kids are.
- digi_owl 9y agoThe PS3 used the Cell, that was a PowerPC accompanies with 8(?) more specialized cores (in hindsight i dare say they were used like oversized DSPs) on a single die. The hope was that the PS3 would be a test bed, and that the Cell would be popular in supercomputers. I am not sure if that panned out beyond some images of PS3s being piled into racks. And the Xbox 360 i think was a 3 core PowerPC design. Looking back at it i wonder if the reason both Sony and Microsoft went with AMD APUs this time round is that AMD brought ATI. And ATI has a history of building graphics hardware for games consoles. Offering up both parts as a single die would greatly simplify the board design of the new consoles. Never mind that by using x86 for the CPU there would be no cross-complication complications to deal with.
- reiichiroh 9y agoAtaribox will be a failure or not launch at all.
- mindcrime 9y agoDefine "failure"?
- sparkpeasy 9y agoThat they've nailed down a price point yet haven't defined the exact GPU beyond saying it's a Radeon makes the whole enterprise very suspect.
- thesmok 9y agoThey never show the back panel with all the connectors, but on this blurry image https://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2017/09/21949812_358672201237369_2195478430542396093_o.jpg?w=738 https://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2017/09/2194981... it looks like the device is powered by an external power brick, which is a no go for me. Using external PSU for a stationary device is just lazy engineering.
- mbrodersen 9y agoThis will crash and burn. You need a massive marketing budget to even begin to compete with Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft. And professional game developers will not support a platform without a large customer base.