Were they to abandon the project it would have been better for them to stay quiet into the void of time and disappear from the scene
Obviously not, they're driven by profits. The best thing to do if they were about to fold, which I am not convinced they are (obviously they will suck up the boot screen even if it equals reduced profits, as it is better some profit than no profit), would be to lie about it and keep sales up for as long as possible before bailing.
I mean TX comes from the Xbox scene.
TX today is not the same as TX from X-Box days, only the name is the same. There are threads here discussing this.
atmosphere = 1 guy
TX = at least 3 guys? idk
I think what's much more important in this respect is that Atmosphere isn't their job, they are not being paid to do it. They do it for their own enjoyment and to help the community. Where TX is cranking large profits margins; and are enabled to do so largely by not offering any real support to their customers (I mean the least they could have is a 1-800) and relying on free tech support from the wider community (including GBAtemp) doing as little as possible else besides what is necessary to rope in more gullible buyers (I'm not saying all SXOS users are gullible buyers, but a lot of them are not as sophisticated in their understanding until well after they bought it and realize they basically have to figure it out their self).
So once the Switch runs out of Pokemon games to mod then it's bye-bye Atmosphere.
Yeah, except for Atmosphere is open-source so you can expect many, many, people to pick up the torch where others have dropped it for many years in the future, much like The Wii or any other legacy console that's been hacked, long after even the manufacturers stop supporting it (I am looking at you Vita, most recently).
As far as SX, you can assume once it is no longer profitable it will be nothing more than a reminder of the $50 you wasted when there were free solutions available (with all the big necessities now, and with a little patience will likely have similar or better features than what you paid for in the future).
.... And by then, you too will be using the open source tools that everyone else is and wondering why you were shilling for TX so hard (who couldn't care any less about you, beyond your initial purchase).