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Atari Selling Studios To Avoid Bankruptcy
hammersuit writes "GameDaily Biz is reporting that Atari has put up five studios for sale in an effort to stave off bankruptcy once again. These include Shiny Studios (thought to be working on next-gen Earthworm Jim games) and Reflections (working on yet another sequel to the Driver series)."
Whoever gets Earthworm Jim better get it right.
I used to work at Atari for six years. Three years as a QA tester, three years as lead QA tester, and six years of whatever they made me do that didn't fall into first two categories. So I started off at Accolade, which was bought out by Infogrames, which became Infogrames North America after GT Interactive was bought (turning a private company into a public company with a reverse buyout), and became Atari when that intellectual property rights was picked up when Hasbro Interactive was bought. The French parent company was on a buying spree that often paid two to four times what each individual company was worth. But, hey, this was before the dotcoms went bust in 2000. Now all these studios of previously bought companies are being sold for pennies on the dollar because the stock price is now trading at less than a dollar when a lot of the financial guesswork was based on a $10/share and growing stock price back in 1999.
I left Atari nearly two years ago. From what I been hearing on the inside, production has moved from the west coast to New York to be with the corporate headquarters and closer to France, and QA may stay in Sunnyvale. There isn't much of a company left when you sell all your overpriced studios and the only products you have is the back catalog. I think someone will buy the back catalog, let the American shell company declare bankruptcy, and the French parent will be at square one with nothing to show for.