Once upon a time, Atari was the dominant force in the gaming market- heck, it created the console gaming market with the Atari 2600. Of course, complete and total mismanagement, coupled with repeated failures, led to Atari’s bowing out of the hardware race, with the last console that they released being the ill fated Jaguar.
However, they are now apparently working on a new system. CEO Fred Chesnais has confirmed a new system, codenamed ‘Ataribox’, which will be based on PC hardware, and will be revealed more in depth later this year. Which is… odd. I wonder what Atari thinks it can even bring to the console gaming market. It is important to note, the market is barely big enough to sustain three players as is- Sony sucks the air out of the room for traditional consoles, Nintendo survives by doing its own thing, and Microsoft struggles unless it focuses on services. How will Atari contend with this?
It should be interesting to see- unless this just turns out to be the hundredth NES Classic Mini-like Atari 2600 re-release.
