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Atari Is Jumping on the Crypto Bandwagon (bloomberg.com)
Atari has announced plans to create a company token and potentially develop cryptocurrency-based casino platforms. The company, commonly associated with arcade classics such as Asteroids, Pac-Man, Space Invaders, and Pong, seems to believe new life can be breathed into the casino industry through cryptocurrency. From a report: "Blockchain technology is poised to take a very important place in our environment and to transform, if not revolutionize, the current economic ecosystem, especially in the areas of the video game industry and online transactions," Atari Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Frederic Chesnais said in the statement. "Our aim is to take strategic positions with a limited cash risk, in order to best create value with the assets and the Atari brand."
When I worked at Accolade, it got bought out by Infogrames in the pre-dot com bust era. Infogrames would later buy Hasbro Interactive, which owned the Atari intellectual property. A few months after the QA team moved to Sunnyvale, home of the original Atari, Infogrames became Atari to no one's surprise. When the Hollywood convergence, publishing every game on every platform failed and funding dried up from the dot com bust, the studios that Infogrames bought at two to four times actual value were sold for pennies on the dollar. What's left is a shell company getting into cryptocurrency.
Same company, different owners, multiple personality disorders. Go figure.
While the name "Atari" may be associated with arcade classics, the company Atari really has no connection whatsoever with that old organization besides the name.
After countless buyouts, takeovers, and bankruptcies I think it would be very difficult to trace any continuity back to the Golden Years.
Please stop it.
There is no Atari anymore.
A more correct headline would be "Company who bought Atari trademark is now getting into crypto-currency". (But, of course, nobody would care about that at all...)
They are based around cryptography, thus the name.
They are based around math, not secret writing. "Crypto" had been jargon for the science of cryptography for decades. Bitcoin makes use of a tiny corner of crypto-oriented math, sure, but that's hardly the interesting thing about it.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Asteroids and Pong were by Atari.
Pac-Man was by Namco. They actually bailed out Atari by purchasing Atari Japan (and its debts) in the 1970s. Atari might have gone bankrupt before it ever became a household name if not for Namco. They also became part-owner of Atari in the late 1980s when Atari failed and was split, but Pac-Man was developed all on their own in 1980.
Space Invaders was by Taito. Which is now a subsidiary of Square Enix (of Final Fantasy fame).
Atari licensed rights to Pac-Man and Space Invaders to make home console versions, but they weren't involved with the arcade classic versions. This may seem like esoteric nit picking, but misattributions like this are how the public got the misconception that Bill Gates invented the Internet, or Apple invented the smartphone. Let's nip it in the bud.