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Atari's New Console Under Fire Again As Crowdfunding Campaign Nears End
With comments from Intellivision, a classic console rivalry may be reignited.
Atari’s upcoming VCS system has recently garnered more negative attention as its crowdfunding campaign nears its end.
Responding to concerns raised by an article from The Register written in March during GDC, Atari recently referred to the author as an “irresponsible troll” on its Facebook page. The Register article panned Atari for its inability, or lack of willingness, to answer seemingly basic questions about the VCS during an interview.
Atari’s Facebook post responded by pointing out the piece was written about a nonfunctional design model, also saying The Register author “wrote what he wanted instead of what was discussed with him.” The Register rebutted yesterday by posting audio from their GDC interview backing up their statements.
IGN also got a look at Atari's display model during GDC and came away similarly skeptical. After a discussion with Atari COO Michael Arzt, we left confused as to who exactly the VCS is for.
The Register’s response to Atari’s insults comes just a week before the Atari VCS’ Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign is scheduled to end, with over $2.9 million dollars currently raised.
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Indiegogo, you can crowdfund something, a piece of hardware, never come out with it, and keep 3 million dollars.
Another recent skeptic is the newly appointed president of Intellivision Entertainment, Tommy Tallarico, who indicated the lack of solid information about the VCS’ hardware combined with Atari’s choice of crowdfunding site gives him reason to be wary.
"On Kickstarter, you had to have hardware in order to kickstart it,” Tallarico told us during an interview at E3 2018. "So Indiegogo, you can crowdfund something, a piece of hardware, never come out with it, and keep 3 million dollars."
Tallarico likened the situation to the disastrous, now-canceled crowdfunding campaign behind the Coleco Chameleon, which he referred to as "a big scam." He added, "It wasn’t a system. They used the Atari Jaguar case. They put [out] a thing, and they were trying to raise money."
It’s important to note Atari and its VCS are potential competitors for Tallarico, who is currently working on a new Intellivision console. Tallarico had more thoughts on why he thinks the VCS is “going to fail,” as well as his hopes for Intellivision’s own (also still unknown) system, which we’ll be publishing on IGN next week.
We’ve reached out to Atari for a response to both Intellivision’s criticisms and their back-and-forth spat with The Register and will update the story when we hear back.
Jordan is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter @jdsirani. Tom Marks is IGN's PC Editor and pie maker. You can follow him on Twitter.