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Businesses Software

Atari Is Jumping on the Crypto Bandwagon (bloomberg.com) 67

Posted by msmash from the up-next dept.
Atari has announced plans to create a company token and potentially develop cryptocurrency-based casino platforms. The company, commonly associated with arcade classics such as Asteroids, Pac-Man, Space Invaders, and Pong, seems to believe new life can be breathed into the casino industry through cryptocurrency. From a report: "Blockchain technology is poised to take a very important place in our environment and to transform, if not revolutionize, the current economic ecosystem, especially in the areas of the video game industry and online transactions," Atari Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Frederic Chesnais said in the statement. "Our aim is to take strategic positions with a limited cash risk, in order to best create value with the assets and the Atari brand."
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Atari Is Jumping on the Crypto Bandwagon More

Atari Is Jumping on the Crypto Bandwagon

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  • "Crypto" Bandwagon (Score:4, Insightful)

    by lgw ( 121541 ) on Friday February 16, 2018 @11:10AM (#56135310) Journal

    Here on Slashdot, could be please not use "crypto" as an abbreviation for cryptocurrency? We lost the war for "hacker", and we may lose the war for "crypto", but can we at least not be idiots in Slashdot headlines?

    • Also while my understanding is limited I'd rather call them blockchain or simply virtual money/coins. I guess a good generic term would be e-money.

    • This. Crypto is an important prefix that we still need. Not a shorthand for cryptocurrency.

      Also, there is no advantage to using cryptocurrencies for online gambling. Current online gambling sites use a virtual token system driven by a simple database that is extremely efficient and runs on a trusted system anyway.

    • Nope. Common usage is a motherfucker. You have to live with it. I know, I tried to fight it. I failed.

    • Code signing in the Atari 7800 (Score:4, Interesting)

      by tepples ( 727027 ) <.tepples. .at. .gmail.com.> on Friday February 16, 2018 @02:21PM (#56136582) Homepage Journal

      Especially because Atari was the first console maker to jump on the actual crypto bandwagon, using code signing in the Atari 7800 ProSystem firmware [wikipedia.org].

      Nintendo's competing solution was a pseudorandom number generator called 10NES that ran on a pair of matching microcontrollers, one in the console and one in the game cartridge, not interacting with the game program itself in any way other than to trigger release from reset. True, synchronized PRNGs could be considered a stream cipher, but when viewed as such, the plaintext is a constant stream of zeroes.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Luthair ( 847766 )
      Sadly Slashdot has become an aggregator for tech blogs and the average technical knowledge of tech blogs is the same as that of the average population.

    • I'd just be glad if Slashdot doesn't jump on the bandwagon and change its name to CryptoSlash.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      I fully agree. "Cyber"-morons are welcome to use stupid terms, but it would be nice to have some signs of intelligent life here.

    • Agreed. Look how the media has popularized the term "Drone" to refer to anything that flies. Radio controlled multirotor-copters and fixed-wing planes are not drones. A drone requires autonomous flight capabilities that are usually associated with military use. The majority of what people refer to as drones should be called by a more generic name like quadcopter. Calling a quadcopter a "drone" because it flies is like calling a VW Beetle a racecar because it drives.

      --

  • "very important place in our environment" (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    By increasing the load on our power plants ten fold as everyone tries to jump in on the latest mining craze?

  • Sweet I still have my 2700 (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I wonder how much Bitcoin i can mine when the rom comes out for my Atari 2700

  • After all, the

    like, super-stable genius

    himself couldn't turn a profit on Atlantic City casinos, so surely it would be impossible for Atari geniuses to do it, right?

    And yes I know this comment will be moderated down into oblivion for daring to call out the failure in chief (and being slightly off topic). Go ahead, bring it.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      himself couldn't turn a profit on Atlantic City casinos

      Except the unstable moron ... er ... stable genius never actually ran those casinos.

      The Trump business model [nytimes.com] is:

      But even as his companies did poorly, Mr. Trump did well. He put up little of his own money, shifted personal debts to the casinos and collected millions of dollars in salary, bonuses and other payments. The burden of his failures fell on investors and others who had bet on his business acumen.

      Trump makes his money by a shell game whereby othe

  • Have to strike while the iron is hot (Score:3)

    by JoeyRox ( 2711699 ) on Friday February 16, 2018 @11:20AM (#56135392)
    It's not every day that people are willing to give you millions of dollars in real money in exchange for tokens of fake money.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      You weren't a child of the 1980's spending hours at the video arcade were you? Atari knows all about getting people to exchange real money for tokens.

  • PLEASE don't redefine the word "crypto" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by swillden ( 191260 ) <shawn-ds@willden.org> on Friday February 16, 2018 @11:27AM (#56135430) Journal

    I'm shouting uselessly into the void, I realize, but I really wish people wouldn't redefine "crypto" to mean "cryptocurrency", rather than "cryptography", which is what it has meant for decades.

  • Atari in name only (Score:4, Informative)

    by crgrace ( 220738 ) on Friday February 16, 2018 @11:36AM (#56135474)

    While the name "Atari" may be associated with arcade classics, the company Atari really has no connection whatsoever with that old organization besides the name.

    After countless buyouts, takeovers, and bankruptcies I think it would be very difficult to trace any continuity back to the Golden Years.

  • Not "Atari" (Score:5, Informative)

    by Frescard ( 807703 ) on Friday February 16, 2018 @11:39AM (#56135492)
    Please stop it.
    There is no Atari anymore.

    A more correct headline would be "Company who bought Atari trademark is now getting into crypto-currency". (But, of course, nobody would care about that at all...)

  • Not all those games were Atari (Score:5, Informative)

    by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Friday February 16, 2018 @11:57AM (#56135596)

    The company, commonly associated with arcade classics such as Asteroids, Pac-Man, Space Invaders, and Pong

    Asteroids and Pong were by Atari.

    Pac-Man was by Namco. They actually bailed out Atari by purchasing Atari Japan (and its debts) in the 1970s. Atari might have gone bankrupt before it ever became a household name if not for Namco. They also became part-owner of Atari in the late 1980s when Atari failed and was split, but Pac-Man was developed all on their own in 1980.

    Space Invaders was by Taito. Which is now a subsidiary of Square Enix (of Final Fantasy fame).

    Atari licensed rights to Pac-Man and Space Invaders to make home console versions, but they weren't involved with the arcade classic versions. This may seem like esoteric nit picking, but misattributions like this are how the public got the misconception that Bill Gates invented the Internet, or Apple invented the smartphone. Let's nip it in the bud.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by CodeHog ( 666724 )
      Al Gore not Bill Gates. Accordingly to Abraham Lincoln. /s

    • Thanks for writing this. OP has also confused the company with the brand. None of the people, or the culture of Atari is left at Atari from the days when *some* of those games were created. Someone bought the brand and decided to figure out how to make money with it.

      I worked with smartphones and feature phones before the iPhone. Not one of them was anything like the iPhone. The iPhone transcended into a league of its own. The iPhone category needs a new name because no prior 'smartphone' compared. The iPhon

  • To continue being the choice of scammers everywhere. There may be good uses for a blockchain, but this bunch of dofuses aren't going to be the ones who find it.

    I'm curious to see whether they actually try (and fail) to do something, or whether they use the hype to get investments and then split with the cash.

  • Atari is still in business???
  • "Our aim is to take strategic positions with a limited cash risk, in order to best create value with the assets and the Atari brand."

    There comes a moment of saturation when stringing together buzzwords will only create parody. That moment is now.

  • My dislike for Atari stems from a 'guilt by association' for Infogrames (before they covered themselves in the dead skin of Atari in the early 2000s) acquired Ozisoft whom did not handle the Dreamcast launch in Australia / New Zealand (or the whole console's short life span).

    To this day I still have some anger at Atari because of Ozisoft's handling of the Dreamcast.

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