twinturbo2
butthurt Heat fan
So, what happens to their classic game IPs? Do they still have them, or are they going to sell them to WB Games?
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Atari Gets out of Gaming, Gets into "Gaming"
- Thread starter Imbarkus
- Start date
- 57
Version 3.0
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Actually, I've worked here in Vegas, for major casinos, for the last 15 years, and "Gaming" is correct. They don't use the term "gambling" much - I'm guessing only when legally obligated to do so. It's always "gaming". It's silly, but I suppose it sounds fun, doesn't connotate losing money, etc.
An Atari ST? I had one too. Street Fighter 2 on 8 floppy discs, with 2 minute load times, those were the days 
Aquamarine
Member
- May 24, 2012
- 18,812
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The "real" Atari died a very, very long time ago. The remnants of "Atari" that exist today is pretty much the fifth incarnation of a company named "Atari." It's a dying, hollow shell of a company that exists to exploit Atari's legacy assets.
The original Atari:
Atari Inc. (Sunnyvale, California)
1972 - 1984
Fate?
+ Liquidated in bankruptcy due to the Great Crash of 1983.
+ Assets and Atari name sold to Jack Tamriel, who founded a company called "Atari Corporation"
The second Atari:
Atari Corporation (Sunnyvale, California)
1984 - 1996
Fate?
+ The Atari Lynx / Jaguar were abysmal failures, and the Tamriel family wanted out
+ JTS purchased Atari from the Tamriel family in 1996
+ JTS went bankrupt in 1998, all assets were sold to Hasbro Interactive
The third Atari:
Atari Interactive (JTS / Hasbro)
1996 - 2001
Fate?
+ Sold to Infogrames Entertainment SA in 2001
+ Renamed "Infogrames Entertainment, Inc."
The fourth Atari:
Infogrames Interactive / Atari Interactive (Infogrames)
2001 - 2009
Fate?
+ Infogrames Entertainment SA changed their name to "Atari SA" in 2009 after a restructuring
The fifth Atari:
Atari Interactive / Atari SA
2009 - present
Fate?
+ Filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2013
+ Exited Chapter 11 reorganization in December 2013, still exists
There was also Atari Games / Midway Games...but that's a whole separate thing altogether.
The original Atari:
Atari Inc. (Sunnyvale, California)
1972 - 1984
Fate?
+ Liquidated in bankruptcy due to the Great Crash of 1983.
+ Assets and Atari name sold to Jack Tamriel, who founded a company called "Atari Corporation"
The second Atari:
Atari Corporation (Sunnyvale, California)
1984 - 1996
Fate?
+ The Atari Lynx / Jaguar were abysmal failures, and the Tamriel family wanted out
+ JTS purchased Atari from the Tamriel family in 1996
+ JTS went bankrupt in 1998, all assets were sold to Hasbro Interactive
The third Atari:
Atari Interactive (JTS / Hasbro)
1996 - 2001
Fate?
+ Sold to Infogrames Entertainment SA in 2001
+ Renamed "Infogrames Entertainment, Inc."
The fourth Atari:
Infogrames Interactive / Atari Interactive (Infogrames)
2001 - 2009
Fate?
+ Infogrames Entertainment SA changed their name to "Atari SA" in 2009 after a restructuring
The fifth Atari:
Atari Interactive / Atari SA
2009 - present
Fate?
+ Filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2013
+ Exited Chapter 11 reorganization in December 2013, still exists
There was also Atari Games / Midway Games...but that's a whole separate thing altogether.
Imbarkus
As Sartre noted in his contemplation on Hell in No Exit, the true horror is other members.
As I mentioned above this looks like a new, sixth Atari, with 10 employees headquartered in New York. They filed to separate from Atari/ASA (i.e. Infogrames, the French holding company whose stable of developers included Eden Games) as part of their bankruptcy restructuring begun last year.
What I don't think anybody knows without talking to them is which IPs are among their holdings and, as twinturbo2 asks, what will happen them in regards to gaming, as well as "gaming."
3 mil a year in revenue must come from the App Store offerings of their classic IPs already, I imagine, or licensing fees therein to other dev/pub combos.
What I don't think anybody knows without talking to them is which IPs are among their holdings and, as twinturbo2 asks, what will happen them in regards to gaming, as well as "gaming."
3 mil a year in revenue must come from the App Store offerings of their classic IPs already, I imagine, or licensing fees therein to other dev/pub combos.
martygoldberg
Neo Member
- Nov 14, 2013
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- 0
Re: the last few posts, there's a bunch of incorrect/missing info. Hope this helps.
Here's the long and short of it:
Atari Inc. (1972-1984) had half of it's assets sold off (the Consumer Division assets) and was immediately renamed to Atari Games Inc. It was then eventually paired down to just the Coin Division and then it was sold in it's entirety to NAMCO and renamed Atari Games Corp. The Consumer Division assets that had been sold off were bought by Jack Tramiel, who folded that into his own company TTL, and then renamed TTL to Atari Corp. None of these sales had anything to do with bankruptcy, there was never any bankruptcy declared or filed for. Not sure where Aquamarine got that from.
Atari Games Corp. continued as a coin company until 2003 (before being bought and sold three more times, the last of which was Williams/Midway in 1996. Midway changed it's name to Midway Games West in 2000). It was shut down completely in 2003 and it's IP now reside with Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment via it's buyout of Midway's IP in 2009.
Tramiel's Atari Corp. reverse merged with JTS in 1996, it was not sold to JTS. The two companies merged to form a new JTS company, and then Atari Corp. was eventually whittled down to become just a division in the new company (one person at a desk) before being shut down completely when all the Atari related IP was sold to Hasbro in 1998.
Hasbro's Atari Interactive was simply a branding under Hasbro Interactive. Hasbro Interactive was what was sold to Infogrames and renamed to Infogrames Interactive, Inc. (not Infogrames Entertainment, Inc.). When Infogrames decided to rebrand all their subsidiaries to "Atari" branded names in 2003, Infogrames Interactive was rebranded to Atari Interactive.
The current "Atari Inc." is also simply one of those rebranded subsidiaries. It formerly existed as GT Interactive, largely a discount game publisher by the time Infogrames snapped up controlling interest in 1999). In 2003 Infogrames had it rebrand itself to Atari Inc. All the Atari IP and brand name still resided under Atari Interactive (as it does to this day). In further irony, GT/Atari Inc. had to license the name and IP from Atari Interactive up until the time Infogrames completely bought out GT/Atari Inc. This "sixth" Atari was not new.
Infogrames then changed it's name to Atari SA in 2009 and moved it's main operations to the US (Los Angeles specifically, to be near it's main subsidiary Humongous Entertainment. At that time, any remaining staff at Atari Inc. (there had already been big layoffs) were shifted out to Los Angeles under Atari SA. Atari Inc./Atari Interactive literally became a set of cubicles right next to each in New York, manned by a half dozen people.
Additionally, the claims on filing for separation from Atari SA during the bankruptcy last year were an illusion. The same person, Jim Wilson, was head of all three "companies." Just as Frederic Chesnais is now. The staff of 10 is for all three companies, not a "sixth Atari." There is no separated "independent American company."
As for what IP they own, a lot. Between what GT Interactive had bought up and what Infogrames had bought up in the late 90s, there's a lot of latent IP besides the Atari IP, and even then I don't think they currently know everything.
Regarding this gambling initiative, it's nothing new. Atari Casino was something they had on their plate long before the bankruptcy (and it was even listed in the bankruptcy filings). This has nothing to do with actual gambling machines, it's an online social casino. I.E. entirely in the web browser. That's what FlowPlay (http://www.flowplay.com/) does. This should not be confused with the slot machines done by IGT, which are simply machines that IGT licensed the Atari brand and IP to build on their own. That's actually the second time that's happened, Bally did the same with PONG in 2007 for their slot version of it.
Here's the long and short of it:
Atari Inc. (1972-1984) had half of it's assets sold off (the Consumer Division assets) and was immediately renamed to Atari Games Inc. It was then eventually paired down to just the Coin Division and then it was sold in it's entirety to NAMCO and renamed Atari Games Corp. The Consumer Division assets that had been sold off were bought by Jack Tramiel, who folded that into his own company TTL, and then renamed TTL to Atari Corp. None of these sales had anything to do with bankruptcy, there was never any bankruptcy declared or filed for. Not sure where Aquamarine got that from.
Atari Games Corp. continued as a coin company until 2003 (before being bought and sold three more times, the last of which was Williams/Midway in 1996. Midway changed it's name to Midway Games West in 2000). It was shut down completely in 2003 and it's IP now reside with Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment via it's buyout of Midway's IP in 2009.
Tramiel's Atari Corp. reverse merged with JTS in 1996, it was not sold to JTS. The two companies merged to form a new JTS company, and then Atari Corp. was eventually whittled down to become just a division in the new company (one person at a desk) before being shut down completely when all the Atari related IP was sold to Hasbro in 1998.
Hasbro's Atari Interactive was simply a branding under Hasbro Interactive. Hasbro Interactive was what was sold to Infogrames and renamed to Infogrames Interactive, Inc. (not Infogrames Entertainment, Inc.). When Infogrames decided to rebrand all their subsidiaries to "Atari" branded names in 2003, Infogrames Interactive was rebranded to Atari Interactive.
The current "Atari Inc." is also simply one of those rebranded subsidiaries. It formerly existed as GT Interactive, largely a discount game publisher by the time Infogrames snapped up controlling interest in 1999). In 2003 Infogrames had it rebrand itself to Atari Inc. All the Atari IP and brand name still resided under Atari Interactive (as it does to this day). In further irony, GT/Atari Inc. had to license the name and IP from Atari Interactive up until the time Infogrames completely bought out GT/Atari Inc. This "sixth" Atari was not new.
Infogrames then changed it's name to Atari SA in 2009 and moved it's main operations to the US (Los Angeles specifically, to be near it's main subsidiary Humongous Entertainment. At that time, any remaining staff at Atari Inc. (there had already been big layoffs) were shifted out to Los Angeles under Atari SA. Atari Inc./Atari Interactive literally became a set of cubicles right next to each in New York, manned by a half dozen people.
Additionally, the claims on filing for separation from Atari SA during the bankruptcy last year were an illusion. The same person, Jim Wilson, was head of all three "companies." Just as Frederic Chesnais is now. The staff of 10 is for all three companies, not a "sixth Atari." There is no separated "independent American company."
As for what IP they own, a lot. Between what GT Interactive had bought up and what Infogrames had bought up in the late 90s, there's a lot of latent IP besides the Atari IP, and even then I don't think they currently know everything.
Regarding this gambling initiative, it's nothing new. Atari Casino was something they had on their plate long before the bankruptcy (and it was even listed in the bankruptcy filings). This has nothing to do with actual gambling machines, it's an online social casino. I.E. entirely in the web browser. That's what FlowPlay (http://www.flowplay.com/) does. This should not be confused with the slot machines done by IGT, which are simply machines that IGT licensed the Atari brand and IP to build on their own. That's actually the second time that's happened, Bally did the same with PONG in 2007 for their slot version of it.
Imbarkus
As Sartre noted in his contemplation on Hell in No Exit, the true horror is other members.
Good info. Thanks, and sorry for any confusion I both experienced and (hopefully understandably) caused!
martygoldberg
Neo Member
- Nov 14, 2013
- 9
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- 0
Not a problem. I know the whole thing is really confusing, and the current "Atari" isn't helping the matter by trying to pretend they're the original one in some of their press releases.