Atari is a corporate and brand name owned by several entities since its inception in 1972. It is currently owned by Atari Interactive, a wholly owned subsidiary of the French publisher Atari, SA (ASA).[1] The original Atari Inc. was founded in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney. It was a pioneer in arcade games, home video game consoles, and home computers. The company's products, such as Pong and the Atari 2600, helped define the computer entertainment industry from the 1970s to the mid 1980s.
In 1984, the original Atari Inc. was split, and the arcade division was turned into Atari Games Inc.[2] Atari Games received the rights to use the logo and brand name with appended text "Games" on arcade games, as well as rights to the original 1972 - 1984 arcade hardware properties. The Atari Consumer Electronics Division properties were in turn sold to Jack Tramiel's Tramel Technology Ltd., which then renamed itself to Atari Corporation.[3][4] In 1996, Atari Corporation reverse merged with disk drive manufacturer JT Storage (JTS),[5] becoming a division within the company.
In 1998, Hasbro Interactive acquired all Atari Corporation related properties from JTS.,[6] creating a new subsidiary, Atari Interactive.[7] IESA bought Hasbro Interactive in 2001 and renamed it to Infogrames Interactive.[8] IESA changed the company name entirely to Atari Interactive in 2003.[1]
The company that currently bears the name Atari Inc. was founded in 1993 under the name GT Interactive. IESA acquired a 62% controlling interest in GT Interactive in 1999, and renamed it Infogrames, Inc.[9] Following IESA's acquisition of Hasbro Interactive, Infogrames, Inc. intermittently published Atari branded titles for Infogrames Interactive. In 2003, Infogrames Inc. licensed the Atari name and logo from Atari Interactive and changed its name to Atari Inc.[10] On October 11, 2008, Infogrames completed its acquisition of Atari, Inc., making it a wholly owned subsidiary.
Atari SA (formerly Infogrames Entertainment) is a France-based producer, publisher and distributor of interactive video games for a variety of consoles, including Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony, advanced smartphones, iphones, personal computers, web and online. The Company's catalogue of games is based on original franchises (Test Drive, Alone in the Dark, V-Rally, Backyard Sports franchise), Cryptic Studios titles (StarTrek Online, Champions Online), publishing properties (Ghostbusters, The Chronicles of Riddick, The Witcher, Race Pro), international licenses (Dragon Ball Z, Dungeons & Dragons, etc.) and classic games (Pong, Missile Command, Asteroids). The Company has several subsidiaries, including Atari Inc., which distributes games in North America, Atari Interactive Inc., Atari Europe, Cryptic Studios Inc. and Eden Games.
The following year, Atari once again allied itself with its founder, Nolan Bushnell, agreeing to market video games that he had developed. Furthermore, the company announced another big advertising push, in an effort to ensure that the video game crash that had threatened Atari in the early 1980s would not recur. Atari also turned to the courts in December 1988, charging that Nintendo's licensing policies monopolized the market. These moves reflected the continuing lack of demand for Atari's home computer products in the United States, as the company, hampered by its image as a toymaker rather than a high-tech powerhouse, fought for part of this highly competitive market.
In January 1989, Nintendo followed up Atari's suit with a countersuit charging copyright infringement, and by the end of the year, the dispute had reached the U.S. House of Representatives, whose subcommittee on anti-trust echoed Atari's charges. In November 1989, Atari continued its push into the game market by introducing a portable video game player called Lynx, which sold for $200, to compete with Nintendo's popular Game Boy. The company finished out the year with earnings of $4.02 million.
In the spring of 1990, Atari introduced its Portfolio palmtop personal computer. Early the following year, the company came out with a revamped, color Lynx product, and several months later it introduced new notebook computers. Despite these advances, however, Atari was in trouble. Sales of its home computers in Europe began to flag as the company faced increased competition, and in 1991 foreign sales collapsed. In the video games field, Atari's efforts to challenge Nintendo through legal means had been rebuffed, and the company was unable to regain significant market share from its Japanese competitors. By the first quarter of 1992, losses over a three-month period had reached $14 million.
In September 1992, Atari took steps to stem its losses by cutting its research and development expenditures in half and closing branch offices in three states. The company hoped that the introduction of new products, such as the Falcon030 multimedia home entertainment computer would help to revive its fortunes. In addition, the company was working on a more sophisticated video game machine, called the "Jaguar." Nevertheless, 1992 ended with a loss of $73 million.
As Atari began to ship its Falcon030 system to stores in small numbers in early 1993, the company's fate was unclear. Decidedly, it was experiencing another severe downturn, which by the summer had snowballed into what the San Jose Mercury News called a full-fledged financial meltdown: between the second quarters of 1992 and 1993 Atari's sales plummeted 76 percent to only $5.7 million. Sales of its hand-held Lynx games were poor and its Falcon systems were barely visible in the PC marketplace. Atari's hopes now rested on the vaunted 64-bit technology of its soon-to-be-unveiled Jaguar game system, which promised to unseat Sega and Nintendo with the next generation of "high-performance interactive multimedia."
Atari Unravels in the Mid-1990s
In June 1993, IBM signed a $500 million deal with Atari to manufacture Jaguar's hardware, and the first sets hit stores in November. As Jaguar tested the marketplace in 1994, Atari settled a licensing dispute with Nintendo by way of an agreement with former parent Time Warner to raise its stake in Atari to 27 percent. Atari also licensed Jaguar to Sigma Design of California, whose full-motion video technology promised to enable Atari to make the jump from dedicated video game players to the home PC. In September 1994, arch rival Sega also agreed to pay Atari $90 million for the rights to Atari's 70 U.S. game patents. Finally, a partnership with Britain's Virtuality Group seemed to promise a new cutting-edge application for the Jaguar platform: Atari and Virtuality would design a 3-D virtual reality home gaming system to debut in 1995. Within a year of Jaguar's introduction Atari boasted 30 titles for the system, and in mid-1995 Atari announced a CD accessory that would allow CD-ROM games to be played on the Jaguar platform.
All Atari's partnerships and cross-platform efforts, however, could not convince consumers to abandon Sega's Saturn and Nintendo's Playstation for Jaguar, and in October 1995 Atari announced that third quarter revenues had fallen a brutal 40 percent from the previous year. Atari responded by slashing Jaguar's retail price and announcing "Atari Interactive," a new division to make CD-ROM video games for PCs. The writing was on the wall, however, and in January 1996 Jaguar was pulled from the U.S. market.
A month later Atari announced that JTS Corporation, a San Jose-based disk drive maker whose 1994 startup Jack Tramiel had helped fund, would merge with Atari in June. Although Atari publicly maintained that it would continue to market video game consoles and software as a JTS's Atari Division, it soon became clear that Atari's attraction for JTS was not its game technology but its still sizable cash reserves, which JTS would tap to battle disk drive competitors like Seagate and Quantum.
When the JTS merger was finalized in mid-1996 Atari's staff was gutted by 80 percent and its assets liquidated. Some Atari titles lived on through its licensing agreement with Sega, but by the end of 1996 Atari's quarter-century history as an early video entertainment pioneer had come to an end. In February 1998 JTS sold Atari's intellectual property as well as its famous name to Hasbro Interactive, but even this $5 million dollar sale wasn't enough to save JTS, which declared Chapter 7 bankruptcy in February 1999. There was really nothing left of Atari but its name when Hasbro Interactive again sold the company, this time to Infogrames Entertainment S.A., in 2001.
On May 7, 2003, Infogrames announced that it was changing the name of its U.S. operations to Atari. Its NASDAQ symbol was likewise changed to ATAR. Though Atari lived on in name, its future history would be written by Infogrames.
OVERALL
Beta: 1.61
Market Cap (Mil.): €69.66
Shares Outstanding (Mil.): 24.27
Annual Dividend: --
Yield (%): --
FINANCIALS
ATAR.PA Industry Sector
P/E (TTM): -- 23.59 8.93
EPS (TTM): 97.44 -- --
ROI: -- 4.47 0.90
ROE: -- 4.72 1.56
Statistics:
Incorporated: 1972
Dissolved: 1998
NAIC: 511210 Software Publishers
Key Dates:
1972: Nolan Bushnell establishes Atari as a computer game developer.
1975: Atari introduces the home version of the Pong game.
1976: Warner Communications acquires Atari.
1982: Pac-Man debuts.
1985: Atari, under new ownership, begins manufacturing home computers.
1996: Financially troubled in the face of competition from Sega and Nintendo, Atari merges with JTS Corporation.
1998: JTS is purchased by Hasbro, which dissolves Atari.
2001: Infogrames Entertainment S.A. acquires Hasbro and the rights to the Atari name; the company's American subsidiary is renamed Atari Inc..
Name Age Since Current Position
Dangeard, Frank 53 2009 Non-Executive Chairman of the Board
Datta, Hindol 2010 Interim Chief Financial Officer
Keller, Kristen Member of the Management Board, Vice President, General Counsel
Fichelson, Alexandra Member of the Management Board, Secretary
Wilson, Jim 2010 Member of the Management Board, Managing Director, Director
Needham, John Member of the Management Board, Managing Director of Cryptic Studios Inc.
Kosik, Thom Member of the Management Board, Vice Chairman Atari Inc.
Davis, Gene 2009 Director - Representative of The BlueBay Value Recovery (Master) Fund Limited
Lamouche, Didier 51 2007 Independent Director
Virden, Tom 53 2010 Independent Director
Address:
417 5th Ave.
New York, NY 10016
U.S.A.
In 1984, the original Atari Inc. was split, and the arcade division was turned into Atari Games Inc.[2] Atari Games received the rights to use the logo and brand name with appended text "Games" on arcade games, as well as rights to the original 1972 - 1984 arcade hardware properties. The Atari Consumer Electronics Division properties were in turn sold to Jack Tramiel's Tramel Technology Ltd., which then renamed itself to Atari Corporation.[3][4] In 1996, Atari Corporation reverse merged with disk drive manufacturer JT Storage (JTS),[5] becoming a division within the company.
In 1998, Hasbro Interactive acquired all Atari Corporation related properties from JTS.,[6] creating a new subsidiary, Atari Interactive.[7] IESA bought Hasbro Interactive in 2001 and renamed it to Infogrames Interactive.[8] IESA changed the company name entirely to Atari Interactive in 2003.[1]
The company that currently bears the name Atari Inc. was founded in 1993 under the name GT Interactive. IESA acquired a 62% controlling interest in GT Interactive in 1999, and renamed it Infogrames, Inc.[9] Following IESA's acquisition of Hasbro Interactive, Infogrames, Inc. intermittently published Atari branded titles for Infogrames Interactive. In 2003, Infogrames Inc. licensed the Atari name and logo from Atari Interactive and changed its name to Atari Inc.[10] On October 11, 2008, Infogrames completed its acquisition of Atari, Inc., making it a wholly owned subsidiary.
Atari SA (formerly Infogrames Entertainment) is a France-based producer, publisher and distributor of interactive video games for a variety of consoles, including Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony, advanced smartphones, iphones, personal computers, web and online. The Company's catalogue of games is based on original franchises (Test Drive, Alone in the Dark, V-Rally, Backyard Sports franchise), Cryptic Studios titles (StarTrek Online, Champions Online), publishing properties (Ghostbusters, The Chronicles of Riddick, The Witcher, Race Pro), international licenses (Dragon Ball Z, Dungeons & Dragons, etc.) and classic games (Pong, Missile Command, Asteroids). The Company has several subsidiaries, including Atari Inc., which distributes games in North America, Atari Interactive Inc., Atari Europe, Cryptic Studios Inc. and Eden Games.
The following year, Atari once again allied itself with its founder, Nolan Bushnell, agreeing to market video games that he had developed. Furthermore, the company announced another big advertising push, in an effort to ensure that the video game crash that had threatened Atari in the early 1980s would not recur. Atari also turned to the courts in December 1988, charging that Nintendo's licensing policies monopolized the market. These moves reflected the continuing lack of demand for Atari's home computer products in the United States, as the company, hampered by its image as a toymaker rather than a high-tech powerhouse, fought for part of this highly competitive market.
In January 1989, Nintendo followed up Atari's suit with a countersuit charging copyright infringement, and by the end of the year, the dispute had reached the U.S. House of Representatives, whose subcommittee on anti-trust echoed Atari's charges. In November 1989, Atari continued its push into the game market by introducing a portable video game player called Lynx, which sold for $200, to compete with Nintendo's popular Game Boy. The company finished out the year with earnings of $4.02 million.
In the spring of 1990, Atari introduced its Portfolio palmtop personal computer. Early the following year, the company came out with a revamped, color Lynx product, and several months later it introduced new notebook computers. Despite these advances, however, Atari was in trouble. Sales of its home computers in Europe began to flag as the company faced increased competition, and in 1991 foreign sales collapsed. In the video games field, Atari's efforts to challenge Nintendo through legal means had been rebuffed, and the company was unable to regain significant market share from its Japanese competitors. By the first quarter of 1992, losses over a three-month period had reached $14 million.
In September 1992, Atari took steps to stem its losses by cutting its research and development expenditures in half and closing branch offices in three states. The company hoped that the introduction of new products, such as the Falcon030 multimedia home entertainment computer would help to revive its fortunes. In addition, the company was working on a more sophisticated video game machine, called the "Jaguar." Nevertheless, 1992 ended with a loss of $73 million.
As Atari began to ship its Falcon030 system to stores in small numbers in early 1993, the company's fate was unclear. Decidedly, it was experiencing another severe downturn, which by the summer had snowballed into what the San Jose Mercury News called a full-fledged financial meltdown: between the second quarters of 1992 and 1993 Atari's sales plummeted 76 percent to only $5.7 million. Sales of its hand-held Lynx games were poor and its Falcon systems were barely visible in the PC marketplace. Atari's hopes now rested on the vaunted 64-bit technology of its soon-to-be-unveiled Jaguar game system, which promised to unseat Sega and Nintendo with the next generation of "high-performance interactive multimedia."
Atari Unravels in the Mid-1990s
In June 1993, IBM signed a $500 million deal with Atari to manufacture Jaguar's hardware, and the first sets hit stores in November. As Jaguar tested the marketplace in 1994, Atari settled a licensing dispute with Nintendo by way of an agreement with former parent Time Warner to raise its stake in Atari to 27 percent. Atari also licensed Jaguar to Sigma Design of California, whose full-motion video technology promised to enable Atari to make the jump from dedicated video game players to the home PC. In September 1994, arch rival Sega also agreed to pay Atari $90 million for the rights to Atari's 70 U.S. game patents. Finally, a partnership with Britain's Virtuality Group seemed to promise a new cutting-edge application for the Jaguar platform: Atari and Virtuality would design a 3-D virtual reality home gaming system to debut in 1995. Within a year of Jaguar's introduction Atari boasted 30 titles for the system, and in mid-1995 Atari announced a CD accessory that would allow CD-ROM games to be played on the Jaguar platform.
All Atari's partnerships and cross-platform efforts, however, could not convince consumers to abandon Sega's Saturn and Nintendo's Playstation for Jaguar, and in October 1995 Atari announced that third quarter revenues had fallen a brutal 40 percent from the previous year. Atari responded by slashing Jaguar's retail price and announcing "Atari Interactive," a new division to make CD-ROM video games for PCs. The writing was on the wall, however, and in January 1996 Jaguar was pulled from the U.S. market.
A month later Atari announced that JTS Corporation, a San Jose-based disk drive maker whose 1994 startup Jack Tramiel had helped fund, would merge with Atari in June. Although Atari publicly maintained that it would continue to market video game consoles and software as a JTS's Atari Division, it soon became clear that Atari's attraction for JTS was not its game technology but its still sizable cash reserves, which JTS would tap to battle disk drive competitors like Seagate and Quantum.
When the JTS merger was finalized in mid-1996 Atari's staff was gutted by 80 percent and its assets liquidated. Some Atari titles lived on through its licensing agreement with Sega, but by the end of 1996 Atari's quarter-century history as an early video entertainment pioneer had come to an end. In February 1998 JTS sold Atari's intellectual property as well as its famous name to Hasbro Interactive, but even this $5 million dollar sale wasn't enough to save JTS, which declared Chapter 7 bankruptcy in February 1999. There was really nothing left of Atari but its name when Hasbro Interactive again sold the company, this time to Infogrames Entertainment S.A., in 2001.
On May 7, 2003, Infogrames announced that it was changing the name of its U.S. operations to Atari. Its NASDAQ symbol was likewise changed to ATAR. Though Atari lived on in name, its future history would be written by Infogrames.
OVERALL
Beta: 1.61
Market Cap (Mil.): €69.66
Shares Outstanding (Mil.): 24.27
Annual Dividend: --
Yield (%): --
FINANCIALS
ATAR.PA Industry Sector
P/E (TTM): -- 23.59 8.93
EPS (TTM): 97.44 -- --
ROI: -- 4.47 0.90
ROE: -- 4.72 1.56
Statistics:
Incorporated: 1972
Dissolved: 1998
NAIC: 511210 Software Publishers
Key Dates:
1972: Nolan Bushnell establishes Atari as a computer game developer.
1975: Atari introduces the home version of the Pong game.
1976: Warner Communications acquires Atari.
1982: Pac-Man debuts.
1985: Atari, under new ownership, begins manufacturing home computers.
1996: Financially troubled in the face of competition from Sega and Nintendo, Atari merges with JTS Corporation.
1998: JTS is purchased by Hasbro, which dissolves Atari.
2001: Infogrames Entertainment S.A. acquires Hasbro and the rights to the Atari name; the company's American subsidiary is renamed Atari Inc..
Name Age Since Current Position
Dangeard, Frank 53 2009 Non-Executive Chairman of the Board
Datta, Hindol 2010 Interim Chief Financial Officer
Keller, Kristen Member of the Management Board, Vice President, General Counsel
Fichelson, Alexandra Member of the Management Board, Secretary
Wilson, Jim 2010 Member of the Management Board, Managing Director, Director
Needham, John Member of the Management Board, Managing Director of Cryptic Studios Inc.
Kosik, Thom Member of the Management Board, Vice Chairman Atari Inc.
Davis, Gene 2009 Director - Representative of The BlueBay Value Recovery (Master) Fund Limited
Lamouche, Didier 51 2007 Independent Director
Virden, Tom 53 2010 Independent Director
Address:
417 5th Ave.
New York, NY 10016
U.S.A.
Last edited: