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Atari's VCS console faces yet another delay

Atari's VCS console faces yet another delay

To the surprise of literally no-one, Atari has once again delayed its VCS game console.

In a blog post on Medium, chief operating officer Michael Arzt said that the company wouldn't be shipping hardware to consumers who backed the crowdfunded product on IndieGoGo in December. Said audience will - apparently - be receiving their console before of its actual release date of March 2020.

“When we adjusted our schedule in March 2019, we were aiming for year-end 2019 delivery goal for the IndieGoGo backers,” Arzt wrote.

“Today, given the work still to be done, including the final stages of our certification and testing cycles, we now realise we will need a few more weeks than anticipated. Our teams, factories, and supplier partners are all working incredibly hard to make it happen; but as we all know, the devil is in the details, and we can win or lose a few days during each remaining step and will update our IndieGoGo backers as soon as we have a final date.”

The Atari VCS was revealed in 2017, with Atari GM Feargal Mac saying that the hardware would receive where Steam Machines - remember those?! - failed. The crowdfunding push was delayed at the end of that year, with pre-sale of the hardware launching in May 2018.

One month later in June, the company screamed 'fake news' at media outlet The Register over its preview of the VCS.... before the company released audio of the interview in full.


PCGamesInsider Contributing Editor

Alex Calvin is a freelance journalist who writes about the business of games. He started out at UK trade paper MCV in 2013 and left as deputy editor over three years later. In June 2017, he joined Steel Media as the editor for new site PCGamesInsider.biz. In October 2019 he left this full-time position at the company but still contributes to the site on a daily basis. He has also written for GamesIndustry.biz, VGC, Games London, The Observer/Guardian and Esquire UK.