Nice question
Either way, it would have done far better than not being sold and under the helm of M.O.
As to YoYo, they made some shitty decisions, but there again most companies do, in the field, so might be unfair to say that it would have done better with Atari. YoYo was stuck from the start from the pile of poo that was the code base, would Atari have simply re-written the base from start, who knows. Would have been nice to skip straight to GM Studio bypassing the few disappointed updates they released, would Atari have simply run it through the ground and no GM ? In terms of bug fixes and frequent releases, would it be far less than YoYo? I guess so, perhaps given that YYG is mostly devoted to GM, so in my opinion I think development might be better of with YYG. In terms of the bad decisions I think they both equally would have made some, who would have made the worse is open for pure speculation, though my bets would go towards Atari. Perhaps the product would have been more expensive......however ATARI would have had better funding perhaps ? would this translate to a better product ? In my opinion not necessarily.
Though I'm sure the product name would have sounded more professional than YoYo Runner, YoYo Compiler, YoYo Playa, etc. and maybe they would have adopted a new name, who knows.
Though I wonder, why the bloody hell would ATARI have bought this ?
However there is another thing, YYG's relation to Microsoft......Wasn't it founded by someone who worked at M$ ? developed for M$? so given YYG's relation to M$, might enable better support, licensing, etc. Though this fucking compiler should have been part of the product base since Studio, along with the VM runner, but not an option you paid for........ All in all I think it might have been a wise move to sell it to YYG, even though some people seem to think YYG was going to run it to the ground, but somehow they improved and change a lot since day 1 and made big changes and in 2.0 will probably be the biggest change and makeover they make, including code base, IDE and new function set to replace old legacy ones. So yeah......would ATARI have done the same ? sooner ? Later ? Some might say maybe, I'd be a bit skeptic on that, or if the product were to be better it would take far longer.......
Maybe it could have gone better in some aspects either way. There are pros and cons.
YYG blames everything on the Delphi code base and limitations of the original GM, and now they bloody woke up years later and will do things way different in GMS 2 , about bloody time !
they have a bigger dev team now and the funding, though who knows how this alleged subscriber model will work.
I agree about the publicity trainwreck comments, but that does not necessarily mean ATARI would have released a better product feature wise.
One thing for sure that I am confident on, with ATARI they'd have a far better forum, not this pile of dung they are using, they would have a much better structured community, PROPERLY moderated, and better support initially, not the FIASCO that was the support desk initially. Where I am not 100% sure of my answer is product feature base, quality and price.
Biggest fucking mistake #1, keep the IDE and codebase and simply duct tape. That was the fastest easy way, perhaps ATARI would have had a bigger team and suffice funding to make the bigger changes early on. but then how many features ? how many updates ? bug fixes? there is too many things to take into consideration.
