First Atari Hotel to Begin Construction in Phoenix in Mid-2020 | Hacker News Reader

First Atari Hotel to Begin Construction in Phoenix in Mid-2020

atarihotels.com

42 pointsbdcravens23 comments

> "Let’s face it, how cool will it be to stay inside an Atari?!” said Napoleon Smith III

I have a feeling he's going to be very disappointed by the answer to this question.

If it's anything like working at Atari was, they'll "have layoffs" in the middle of the night and eject you onto the street around 2AM. Good luck getting your luggage. :0)

Just an FYI, nothing branded "Atari" in the last 20 years or more has had anything to do with the home computer/console maker. The brand has been passed around and milked for recognition.

Disclaimer : I'm a shareholder.

Atari is now owned by French video games company Infogrames which renamed itself as Atari, and it is publicly listed. They bought back all of the liquidated american brands and since 2013 they've done a ton of work to get it out of debt (which is now done).

So, they effectively own pretty much all of the original IP and brand, it's just that the company is a rebirth with a new staff and new ambitions. Mostly, they work through partnerships, with little in-house dev, kind of like what a movie producer would work with a few movies licences.

Correct. Which means, as smolder said, the Atari we all remember and love is long gone. The Atari that exists now is nothing but a brand.

I mean, even in 1984 that was already the case. At that point we already had Atari Inc (the original Atari, sort of) splitting into Atari Corp (the home computer assets that Tramiel bought from Warner and called "Atari" but mostly had nothing to do with original Atari in terms of staff or tech) and Atari Games (arcade stuff).

The Tramiels really only had a 10ish year period with Atari Corp before scattering the seeds to the wind.

For Europeans the ”Tramiel” years was the ”real” Atari, not what came before or after.

So, a mediocre hotel with Atari logos on everything and maybe some big Pole Position graphics painted on the walls of the lobby. And a few sets of VR goggles that will immediately become broken and unmaintained?

Good, they're on track to complete their Los Angeles infrastructure by 2049: https://bit.ly/2OwBYNi

>Hotel development and design is being led by Shelly Murphy’s GSD Group and Napoleon Smith III, producer of the wildly successful Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film franchise reboot.

Interesting choice.

I take issue with "wildly," but I suppose it's hard to argue with a 4x ROI... :-/

I bet the final hotel, if it ever gets built, will not have the architectural swooshes.

Those useless details are there for PR when sharing the renders, and are immediately dumped afterwards.

Isn't Phoenix mostly just a connecting hub? If I'm going to vacation in a ridiculously hot, dry, arid place, it's gonna be Vegas, likely by way of a layover in Phoenix where I don't even leave the comfort of the airport. Although, it has been a few years, so maybe things have changed, unlike Phoenix's climate.

Vegas is getting an Atari hotel as well.

Isn't the point of visiting a place to experience it? What's the point of flying/driving somewhere only to put on a VR headset when you arrive?

I suspect the hotel would attract conference groups focused on gaming and tech.

Trying to impress people from those groups with hotel-supplied VR headsets would trap them into a pretty heinous rendition of the Red Queen's Race.

I'm guessing sci-fi and furry conventions would offer a better product-market fit. By definition, most the people there are there on leisure time, so they'll be generally more interested in playing. And the crowd won't be a bunch of people who are making a career of rendering all the hotel's expensive electronics obsolete.

According to an article I read they're planning to outfit the conference rooms with the infrastructure to support eSports tournaments. Otherwise it's an ordinary hotel with retro-gaming themed decorative elements designed to appeal to Gen X and Baby Boomers.

History will look back on mine as the manchild generation. Can't say I'm not doing my part, though

Why can't they start in the bay area where we desperately need to build hotels. Any hotels. Phoenix does not strike me as a thriving hotel market.

I like this idea of mixing real and virtual

so AR? :p

An AR _hotel_, specifically. If done well, it could create an entirely new kind of vacation experience, especially in areas that do not naturally get a lot of tourist traffic.

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