Atari - Offloading Cryptic Studios

This was sent in earlier in the week by Kalniel but I've been swamped this week - apologies to anyone if your link has been missed. Gamasutra reports Atari has released their latest earnings report, which lists MMO studio Cryptic as a "discontinued operation". Our interest comes from Neverwinter, which Gamasutra says is still ongoing "for the time being":

As part of an earnings report today, Atari announced it is divesting of its interest in Champions Online developer Cryptic Studios, calling the development house a "discontinued operation" as of March 31.

Atari will continue to support all current Cryptic products while the publisher looks to sell the studio, Gamasutra understands. Development on the Bay Area studio's Neverwinter project will continue as normal for the time being.

More information.

Finally Atari does something great…again!

IMO all of the MMOs from Cryptic have been horrible, and STO ruined the Star Trek license. Watch though, some Korean company will scoop them up, and attempt to relaunch their games as if they were something great! le sigh

The neverwinter "OMG" was doomed from the start.

Too bad about the Neverwinter game-they were going to have a toolset for people to add there own modules to the game. It might have been worth a look.

I wouldn't write off Neverwinter too fast. Champions Online was going to be Marvel Online when it started out.

City of Heroes was awesome, by the way. Unfortunately, I think Cryptic's best and brightest stuck with that game instead of moving on with Cryptic to make new MMOs.

I love City of Heroes (still play it from time to time), but it's obvious from what Cryptic did with Champions Online that they were content with halfassing their way through releases.

I had no idea that Cryptic was owned by Atari though… Even if they turned out good products, they were doomed anyway

Atari you finally did something right. I only wish you would of asked another studio to make a new NWN. I have no faith or intrest in Cryptic Studios new OMG.

City of Heroes is probably the best and most fun MMO I've played, it was just brilliant. But after that, it was suckage after suckage. It seemed like their selling point was that they could "release" an MMO in 2 years, but what they released was a half-baked thing. Champions Online sucked. Star Trek Online looked great when I played it in alpha and early beta, but then they changed the whole core game like a month before release, and you can guess what that did to the game. I had 0 hope for Neverwinter, as it seems to be just an action RPG.

Can't say this means much to me - as I never cared for Cryptic MMOs, and not even City of Heroes. There is something incredibly artificial about their approach to the genre.