The console, delayed several times, had to rethink to ensure product quality.
Ataribox was announced in 2017, but was later renamed with the current name, Atari VCS. The console, funded through a micromanagement campaign, has suffered several major delays. Not surprisingly, its launch was scheduled for 2018, but it will finally be marketed in early 2020. The company has announced that this time, the project is going well and that it has already reached the final preproduction phase.
The design and engineering teams of Atari have just returned from China, a country where they have been working together with the partners that will be in charge of production. The company states that they have prepared the ins and outs of the system to start mass production of the product.
Atari is committed to quality
Doubts have never been banished from the project and resurfaced again when Rob Wyatt, architect of Atari VCS, announced his departure from the company, as he explained, Atari owed him and his company more than six months as bills. Even so, the financial officer of the classic firm, Michael Arzt, said in an official blog that the launch is imminent, so that the patrons will receive the device on time, that is, around March 2020.
"Atari will always prioritize the launch of a high quality product rather than sticking to a self-imposed date," said Arzt. "That was the truth when the project started, it was in March 2019 and it still is today."
Not to forget in early 2019, the company announced major hardware modifications "to improve system performance", so they opted for an AMD Ryzen processor. "This important change was not made lightly, as it was based on feedback from the Atari VCS community." They also performed internal quality tests and analyzes. The modifications were profiled together with their development partners.
