In brief: In what can be filed under the category of news that will surprise absolutely nobody, Atari’s upcoming VCS won’t make it out to early Indiegogo backers by the end of the year as originally promised. The good news is that we're talking about a delay of only a few weeks and according to Atari brass, backers should still get their units before the general public.
In a recent Medium post on the matter, Atari Chief Operating Officer Michael Arzt said that given the work that still needs to be done like final stage certification and testing, they realized they needed a few more weeks than originally anticipated. A revised, firm launch date wasn’t provided although Arzt said they “are talking weeks here, not months” and that the Indiegogo backers remain their top priority.
Either way, Arzt said, Indiegogo backers will receive their Atari VCS systems before the general public gets theirs in March 2020. And as a bonus, he said Atari will try to come up with some kind of bonus to reward early backers for their patience.
Atari originally intended to ship the VCS this past spring / summer but a last-minute switch to AMD’s Ryzen Embedded R1000 SoC as well as a few industrial design changes meant the company wouldn’t hit that target.
Concern only mounted in October when architect Rob Wyatt resigned from the VCS team, revealing that Atari hadn’t paid invoices to his design firm in six months.
Interested parties can pre-order the VCS directly from Atari. A bundle including the console, a gamepad and a joystick will set you back $389.99.
https://www.techspot.com/news/82994-atari-wont-get-vcs-out-indiegogo-backers-before.html
