Atari - Ceases Game Development

Dhruin

Dhruin

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GameDaily has news that Atari (US) will exit the game development business and focus only on publishing and distribution, losing their CEO in the process and licensing Test Drive back to parent company Infogrames for funds. In the end, this probably has little impact on areas of our interest other than the general ongoing impact of Atari's finances. Here's a snip:
According to the release, Atari's operations going forward "will involve title acquisition, sales and marketing, and physical distribution of products from [Infogrames] IESA, its 51% shareholder, and other selected partners."
Atari has agreed in principle to terminate its Production Services Agreement with IESA in the near future. The company is planning to transfer certain employees and contract other staff on a project basis for a limited period of time. Unfortunately for Atari's employees, this restructuring initiative will also reduce the company's current workforce "in order to re-align the Company's cost structure with its on-going business base."
Along with the withdrawal from production, Atari CEO David Pierce has also announced his resignation. Curtis G. Solsvig III, Chief Restructuring Officer, has been appointed interim CEO and will assume Pierce's responsibilities for now. Atari said that an executive search for a new CEO has already been started.
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More information.
 
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Briosafreak said:
So what will happen to the D&D license for interactive media?
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It will continue to be developed by third party developers, much like it has for all of the past titles Atari have published (Bioware, Troika, Obsidian etc).

All this announcement says is that Atari's own in-house development will cease, which was never an issue for D&D games. Still, it's not a good sign that Atari is all that healthy either, but that's another issue.
 
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Atari (of now) is one of the two companies that should do the proper thing and finally die. In Atari's case, it should free several good licences (DnD is the front-runner obviously, but I'm hoping for a Wheel of Time RPG) up for grabs.
 
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At last Atari can step back and concentrate on what it does best: Rushing brilliant games to market 6 months before they're ready and allowing their customers to spend the next 4 years trying to rewrite code, iron out bugs, and reintroduce the original content and story.

Kudos, Atari, kudos.
 
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All this announcement says is that Atari's own in-house development will cease, which was never an issue for D&D games.
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Actually they will market and sell- meaning distributor work - games from Infogrames and a few more companies, their publishing work is going to be quite limited now, so I don't know if they are keeping D&D in exclusive at all.

We'll see.
 
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I like the part where Atari gets $5 million in advance for licensing something to someone who, effectively, already owns 51% of it. The stuff about contracting employees on a project basis is pretty creative too.

Two things are certain: 1. The folks who came up with this solution have initials by their names, and 2. They still have their jobs.
 
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