thestreet.com— 35% decline in sales, the CFO just resigned, the bank ended its credit, the stock plummeted. This looks like the end for Atari.
Feb 10, 2006View in Crawl 4
The Company Formerly Known As Infogrames is dying (no big surprise here), but I'd put big money that Atari will live on. The question is who (Take Two? NCSoft? EA?) will buy the name and call itself Atari next. Give it 5 years.
Most of you seems to be ignorant of the fact that Infogrames, a HUGE publisher bought hasbo interactive and hence bought the rights to the Atari name, they switched name to Atari.So this company has nothing to do with the one that made the early consoles, this is a mostly PC oriented game publisher. The Unreal series was published by them untill some months back when Epic Games switched to Midway Entertainment. And yeah Atari has released a slew of horrible games, Matrix games, DBZ games, GTA ripoffs etc.
Ok, most here know that the current company bearing the name Atari is not the same company that pioneered home gaming consoles back in the day. However, it still gives us who have fond memories of the original company to pay their respects to it in a public forum, and to share their experiences with others. So back off on the "this is not the real Atari" posts, plz. That said, after reading these posts, I have picked up a few interesting tidbits of information about the current and former Atari, and I thank the people who share that with us. On financial fortunes, if you think a new Atari will do well, definitely get in early ( but not before the name transfer ) as far as buying stock is concerned. The last company I worked for went bankrupt and was bought out, and the stock I held went a value of $0.00, which it still sits at 3 years later. So don't buy in before the new Atari is registered on a stock exchange such as NASDAQ, AMEX ( American Exchange ), or NYSE as you will most likely lose all of your money. The video game market is very splintered, I don't mind competition, but I am still hoping that the industry standardizes the audio/visual/control portions of the game, to make it easy to run it on different platforms ( NES, Windows, Linux, etc ). That way to do not choose with platform to buy your game for based upon who has the title and who does not, but rather who has the best platform according to your requirements. The absolution best would be that you could buy the game once, and play it on any platform you'd like, which would really force companies to compete extremely hard for your business. Another benefit would be that if platform you bought ( say a Sony Playstation ) became obsolete, you could just pick up a new one and still play that games you purchased before. Will this ever happen? Not likely, as companies would rather lock you in to their platform and force you to re-buy games you already purchased to help their bottom line. DRM is another way of doing this. By allowing publishers to control whether or not you can continue to play a game ( license keys could have expiration dates that would lock you out of the game after that date ) using DRM technology, they can ramp up their income by forcing subscriptions or upgrades of their games. I hope the next Atari bucks this trend and realizes by making their games easier to play, their rep will go up, their customer base will go up, and their sales will go up as people turn their backs on the DRM world and migrate to their platform.
This must be an old story. I'm an old fart and I clearly remember Atari dead after the unsuccessful 5200 Game System and the 1200XL personal computer. Was a sad day back in the 80's. I fondly remember spending all nighters in my bedroom in 1984 tapping away at my Atari 800 going onto many old bulletin boards, meeting folks online and borrowing telco codes for placing free long distance calls for my kick ass modem! Ah, good memories...
NOOOO I'm not concerned with which Atari this really is, but rather the possiblity of an Indigo Prophecy sequel or follow-up by the same team. Atar put out the greatest adventure game weve had in a longggg time. What a shame :(
eebaumFeb 11, 2006
The Company Formerly Known As Infogrames is dying (no big surprise here), but I'd put big money that Atari will live on. The question is who (Take Two? NCSoft? EA?) will buy the name and call itself Atari next. Give it 5 years.
echosierratwoFeb 11, 2006
Steve should by them.
krill3_2___Feb 11, 2006
Most of you seems to be ignorant of the fact that Infogrames, a HUGE publisher bought hasbo interactive and hence bought the rights to the Atari name, they switched name to Atari.So this company has nothing to do with the one that made the early consoles, this is a mostly PC oriented game publisher. The Unreal series was published by them untill some months back when Epic Games switched to Midway Entertainment. And yeah Atari has released a slew of horrible games, Matrix games, DBZ games, GTA ripoffs etc.
fortezzaFeb 11, 2006
Ok, most here know that the current company bearing the name Atari is not the same company that pioneered home gaming consoles back in the day. However, it still gives us who have fond memories of the original company to pay their respects to it in a public forum, and to share their experiences with others. So back off on the "this is not the real Atari" posts, plz. That said, after reading these posts, I have picked up a few interesting tidbits of information about the current and former Atari, and I thank the people who share that with us. On financial fortunes, if you think a new Atari will do well, definitely get in early ( but not before the name transfer ) as far as buying stock is concerned. The last company I worked for went bankrupt and was bought out, and the stock I held went a value of $0.00, which it still sits at 3 years later. So don't buy in before the new Atari is registered on a stock exchange such as NASDAQ, AMEX ( American Exchange ), or NYSE as you will most likely lose all of your money. The video game market is very splintered, I don't mind competition, but I am still hoping that the industry standardizes the audio/visual/control portions of the game, to make it easy to run it on different platforms ( NES, Windows, Linux, etc ). That way to do not choose with platform to buy your game for based upon who has the title and who does not, but rather who has the best platform according to your requirements. The absolution best would be that you could buy the game once, and play it on any platform you'd like, which would really force companies to compete extremely hard for your business. Another benefit would be that if platform you bought ( say a Sony Playstation ) became obsolete, you could just pick up a new one and still play that games you purchased before. Will this ever happen? Not likely, as companies would rather lock you in to their platform and force you to re-buy games you already purchased to help their bottom line. DRM is another way of doing this. By allowing publishers to control whether or not you can continue to play a game ( license keys could have expiration dates that would lock you out of the game after that date ) using DRM technology, they can ramp up their income by forcing subscriptions or upgrades of their games. I hope the next Atari bucks this trend and realizes by making their games easier to play, their rep will go up, their customer base will go up, and their sales will go up as people turn their backs on the DRM world and migrate to their platform.
cybrshrkFeb 12, 2006
This must be an old story. I'm an old fart and I clearly remember Atari dead after the unsuccessful 5200 Game System and the 1200XL personal computer. Was a sad day back in the 80's. I fondly remember spending all nighters in my bedroom in 1984 tapping away at my Atari 800 going onto many old bulletin boards, meeting folks online and borrowing telco codes for placing free long distance calls for my kick ass modem! Ah, good memories...
prkchpsndwichesFeb 13, 2006
NOOOO I'm not concerned with which Atari this really is, but rather the possiblity of an Indigo Prophecy sequel or follow-up by the same team. Atar put out the greatest adventure game weve had in a longggg time. What a shame :(