The Atari Speakerhat is a Weird Attempt at Blade Runner's Future Technology

The first Blade Runner film takes place in the far, far future of 2019. In two years, cars will fly, androids will murder us, and Atari will once again rule the media discourse along with Pan Am, Bell, and Cuisinart. Now, thanks to Atari's latest product release, the 2019 future of Blade Runner is sure to happen. I'm talking about Atari's Speakerhat.

The Atari Speakerhat is promotional tie-in item for Blade Runner 2049, a cheeky marketing stunt given that Atari was one of the companies referenced in Ridley Scott's sci-fi opus. The Speakerhat is basically a baseball hat with Bluetooth enabled high-fidelity stereo speakers and microphone that can connect to your phone. That means you can both play music and answer phone calls. The hat is a collaboration between Atari, Audioware, and NECA.

"With the recent reveal of our Ataribox project and now with Speakerhats, we envision a full range of connected personal devices that live at society's intersection of entertainment, technology and social connectivity that legendary film worlds like Blade Runner 2049 fortell," said AtariConnect COO Michael Arzt in a statement.

Likewise, NECA COO Joel Weinshanker also likened the new product to future-facing technologies. "The minute the new trailer hit, we started getting requests for Atari-branded Blade Runner 2049 products and knew we'd need to partner with Atari to satisfy countless joint fans of both franchises," said Weinshanker.

Call me skeptical, but I'm having some difficulty likening the Speakerhat to future technologies from the year 2049, or even 2019 for that matter. I guess the only way for me to truly see what it is I might be missing is for Atari to invite me to the incredibly exclusive closed beta where only 10 individuals will be invited to test out the hats. For the sake of Futurist journalism, I invite Atari to make me into a believer.