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Hope Fading at Atari
hisham writes "On the heels of the bad news on SGI's financial health, another former giant of the tech world announces concerns of bankruptcy: 'Bad times got worse at Atari as the company posted a loss and a 35% decline in sales in the important holiday quarter.' The CFO has resigned, and the company released a statement saying 'the uncertainties caused by these conditions raise substantial doubt about [Atari's] ability to continue as a going concern.' An icon of videogame history; if things turn sour, it will be sad to see Atari go (again)."
Long Gone at that.
Atari really died when they were bought by Warner Communications and Nolan Bushnell was given the heave ho.
I've never considered Infogrames to be an icon of anything. Let's face it ... the real Atari died a loooong time ago. From Wikipedia's Atari article:
In March 1998, JTS sold the Atari name and assets to Hasbro Interactive for $5 million--less than a fifth of what Warner Communications had paid 22 years earlier. This transaction primarily involved the brand and intellectual property, which now fell under the Atari Interactive division of Hasbro Interactive. The brand name changed hands again in December 2000, when French software publisher Infogrames took over Hasbro Interactive.
... on The Temple of Elemental Evil, good riddance.
do you go out of business when all you do is license your old games, sell your old console, and license your logo to t-shirt makers? They have got to have like $113 in R&D spent per month, where the hell did the money go?
I would suspect that the millions in licenseing fees have been paid out to some fatcat PHB execs in the form of bonuses. Mostly, it just annoys me to see companies do this. it happens all over, not just the gaming industry. You name it - laundry detergent, cars, restraunts. I've seen it time and again.
First, "in order to maximize profit" the quality of the product begins to creep downward while the price either maintains or goes up. Then, because the product is absolute crap, the bean counters who dictated this are amazed when people get fed up and start buying something else.
As an avid gamer, I've played several of Atari's recent releases. They pretty much sucked. The graphics were poorly rendered. The games were buggy. It was quite evident that they didn't receive the polish that they should have. And the price? Well, they weren't any cheaper than anything that is well polished, like offerings from Microsoft, Bioware or EA.
Capitalism runs under darwinistic rules - survival of the fittest. Atari certianly isn't the "fittest" and while I will be sad to see them die since I loved Pole Position, I'll only be truly unhappy until someone better comes along with slick new games for me to play.
2 cents,
Queen B
HDGary secures my bank
They quit Atari and founded Activision. Why? Because the new owners were morons, and stiffled their creativity with stupid things like dress code, to say the least.
More info on Activision
scene interesting and fun these days.
http://www.atariage.com/ has an active home brew community that is working on some very interesting stuff. The tech is old, but that does not seem to matter very much where creativity is concerned. I've seen a steady progress of 2600 improvements over the years that's just great to watch and participate in.
It's a lot like the 80's when we were all writing games for one another, playing them and having fun.
Blogging because I can...
I saw this posted, with the same damn wistful tone, over on Metafilter too! There I was more understanding, but the fact that the same story is popping up everywhere, with the same tone, makes me a little suspecious.
This is NOT the classic Atari! The second-most classic Atari was the one that released the home computers and game consoles, which was fine for a while, but ultimately it died all on its own.
The MOST classic Atari, without question, is the one that got renamed Midway Games West before dumping everyone and dying themselves. The that used to be known as Atari Games. The arcade company. The only game company I can think of who made better games than Nintendo.
They made everything in the Infogrammes-Atari's "classics" catalogue (and most of them are still deserving of that name), and most of the good stuff in the three Midway Arcade Treasures compilations to boot. THEY should be mourned. Not, by ANY STRETCH OF THE IMAGINATION, THIS Atari.
They're still called Infogrames in Europe (though they publish under the Atari logo and name) and according to their website their income in Europe went up by 6% even though their US income went down by 40%.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.