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Sep 2, 2023 · For a point in time, Atari was seemingly the king of the video game console market. But it unravelled quite quickly. Here's how it went down.
Mar 27, 2024 · Atari is still in business. The brand is now owned by a French company called Atari SA (formerly Infogrames). They now primarily focus on mobile games, PC releases, and leveraging their legacy by licensing their classic properties like Pac-Man and Asteroids.
Sep 11, 2023 · There's been some very good software, an increased focus on preserving the company's legacy, and even a limited return to hardware with the gorgeous but underpowered Atari VCS. Now two more ...
Atari (/ ə ˈ t ɑːr i /) is a brand name that has been owned by several entities since its inception in 1972. It is currently owned by French holding company Atari SA (formerly Infogrames).
- The Bushnell Era
- The Warner Era
- The Tramiel Era
- The JTS Era
- Atari Games
- The Hasbro Era
- Atari SA
- Is Atari Still in Business?
The Atari name changed hands multiple times, and it started early. We associate Atari with its founder, Nolan Bushnell. During this time, Atari thrived both in the arcades and in the home, selling first-generation Pong video game consoles.
Bushnell sold the company to Warner Communications way back in 1977, before the release of the original Atari 2600home console that most people associate so closely with the Atari brand. The purchase price was $30 million. So during the prime of Atari’s existence, Atari was a subsidiary of Warner Communications. Atari thrived until the notorious Vi...
Jack Tramiel had little interest in home consoles. He inherited Atari’s 8-bit computer line and continued to sell it, though with limited success. Under Tramiel, Atari developed the Atari ST line of computers, which featured the GEM graphical user interface, giving a Mac-like experience for a lot less money. But the ST wasn’t quite the Commodore 64...
On February 13, 1996, Atari merged with JTS, a maker of cheap hard drives. They were slow and unreliable, so their low price was all they had going for them. JTS needed money and Atari needed a product to sell, so the match worked for a time. The company never worked out its reliability issues though, and was out of business by 1999. JTS sold the A...
Tramiel had no interest in the arcade game market, so Warner retained the Atari arcade division, renaming it Atari Games, and sold it to Namco in 1985. Namco sold it to Atari employees in 1986. Atari Games produced a line of game cartridges for the Nintendo NES, which it sold under the Tengenbrand name. In 1993, Time Warner, the successor to Warner...
After purchasing the Atari name from the struggling JTS in 1998, Hasbro used the Atari name and ported some of the existing titles to newer systems, but Hasbro quickly sold its Hasbro Interactive division to game publisher Infogrames in 2000.
Infogrames relaunched the Atari brand in 2001 with a big splash, and launched a European subsidary Atari SA in 2003. The structure was complicated, as it ran two subsidiaries in the United States under the names Atari Inc. and Atari Interactive. In May 2009, the parent company Infogrames took on the Atari name. In 2013, the Atari companies filed fo...
So is Atari still in business? A purist might say Atari ended when Jack Tramiel merged his company with JTS. But someone has been using the Atari name and Atari logo pretty much nonstop since the 1970s in spite of all the changes in ownership. The company’s focus has changed a lot, and it’s no longer the powerhouse it was in the 1980s. But it still...
Nov 29, 2023 · Atari has been considered a retro brand for decades now, but it hasn't always leaned into that designation. While licensed T-shirts and plug-and-play consoles have been a fairly consistent...
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Aug 23, 2022 · Yet after years of poor licensed games in the ‘80s – culminating in the mass burial of thousands of E.T game cartridges – and a misjudged noughties pivot to mobile, many wrote off the once...
