Infogrames Officially Changes Name To Atari

According to this story from Reuters via Yahoo News, Infogrames is now officially changing its name to Atari worldwide. The French publisher originally picked up the home rights to the Atari name after buying Hasbro Interactive in 2001, and had recently been rebranding much of its line-up (even PC RPGs) with the Atari logo alongside the Infogrames one. Lovable French ruffian and Atari CEO Bruno Bonnell will open the Nasdaq stock exchange on Wednesday morning to herald the new ATAR stock ticker symbol for the company.

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The Incarnations of Atari

[fm6]

• Founded by Nolan Bushnell (1972).
• Sold to Warner Communications (predecessor of AOL-Time-Warner) 1975.
• Warner splits Atari into Home and Arcade divisions. Jack Trammiel, founder (forcibly retired) of Commodore buys Home division, forms Atari Computer Corp. (1984)
• Arcade division gets renamed Atari Games, then Atari/Tengen, then Time Warner Interactive, then gets sold to Williams/WMS, which sells it to Midway, which renames it Midway Games West! (Dates and veracity dubious!)
• Atari Computer Corp merges with disk drive maker JTS (1996)
• JTS/Atari sells its "Atari assets" to Hasbro Interactive (1998).
• Hasbro Interactive absorbed by Infogrammes Entertainment SA as part of malicious French conspiracy. Renamed Infogrammes Interactive. (2001)
• Infogrammes Entertainment renames its North American acquistions "Atari". (2003)
• Chuck E Cheese buys Infogrammes Entertainment SA, renames it "Freedom Software" (2004).

In researching this timeline, I made a truely mind-boggling discovery: Atari was briefly in the engineering/scientific/graphics workstation business!

Re:The Incarnations of Atari

[QuackQuack]

Midway also recently shut down the "Midway Games West" division, prompting a wave of "Atari goes out of business" articles.

In researching this timeline, I made a truely mind-boggling discovery: Atari was briefly in the engineering/scientific/graphics workstation business [atarimuseum.com]!

Yep, They also made unsuccessful PC clones at one point. Tramiel's Atari tried lots of things that ultimately failed. They didn't have the resources to pull them off.

Also, in the Warner days, Atari was rumored to be developing a system and games that could be controlled by "thought" power. I kid you not. You attached sensors to your forehead, and positive thoughts caused the system to do one thing, and negative thoughts, something else. That was the theory, I guess they weren't successful at it, because I'm sure we would've seen such a system from somebody if it could be done.

I'm okay with this.

[pommaq]

Well, the Infogrames armadillo was cool and all, but that "Fuji" logo is simply one of the most beautiful pieces of graphic design ever.
EVER.

Trying to hide shame behind a proud name

[Nice2Cats]

Infogrames just screwed up the release of Master of Orion 3 big time -- the game is a disaster and they still haven't released even the first code patch for it after, what now, two months? To say I now avoid products with that name is an understatement.

Now, Atari -- I still have my Atari ST downstairs, and from time to time I plug it in, boot it and cry a little over the clean, crisp picture on the screen, the ease of use, and how unfair the world in general is. I could even do uucp with that machine, and if it only had had a MMU...and if only IBM hadn't bought MS DOS...if only pigs could fly...

Shame, shame, shame on Infogrames for dragging Atari down into the muck with them. Of course, it won't help: The Brits tried renaming their continuous disaster of a nuclear plant "Windscale" to "Sellafield" (or vice versa, I keep forgetting) but that didn't fool people one bit.