Atari's CEO Is "Extremely Pleased" With Company's Performance In 2024

Remarkable what fundamental shift the management team achieved with Atari. It reminds me of Lego, which was almost dying before Jørgen Vig Knudstorp became new CEO in 2004, and now Lego is highly profitable and hip.

I wish Atari the very best!

The ATARI CEO should be extremely pleased he has a company and a job in 2025. 😂

Yars Rising was a lot of fun (developed by WayForward, published by Atari). 😊

This is not the real Atari that went bankrupt in 1995.

The new Atari is the old Infogrames game publisher that just changed the name to Atari.
A French company bought their assets.

To me they will always be Infogrames like they were since 1983.

Fun fact: Infogrames once owned the developer of GTA for less than 1 year, and owned other devs like Gremlin, Melbourne House, Eden Games etc.

I got Atari 50 last year, but still haven't checked it out ... maybe when the DLCs get a significant price drop, then I can enjoy it all in one go.
Also looking forward to a physical version of the Power Rangers game sometimes this year.

Good for them that not only did they do a good job, but also that they are proud of themselves ... how rare is that nowadays!!

It'll be interesting to see how they grow the company from here.

@Yalloo It includes Jaguar games, and later also got a DLC with more games.

I feel like this coverage should be on your sister site Time Extension

@Toastmaster Thank you 🙏🏻 I'm aware of what's included in the DLCs. I just find the 10-15 EUR a bit much for such old games and a bunch of documentaries. Not that I am not interested ... just not at this price point. More likely around the 5 EUR. I hoped that they would distribute both DLCs for free to the adopters of the initial Atari 50, since they're selling the "expanded" version for the same price I bought the original.
But I also understand how marketing works 😅

I initially read that as "extremely pissed," and I would have believed it, too lmao

You know they are doing well when they are profiting and expanding in this inclement economy! I've really liked their output on Switch - the Recharged series of games, Lunar Lander Beyond, Haunted House, Yars Rising, and of course the Atari 50 compilations have all been a joy to add to my shelf.

But where is the physical of the Llamasoft/Jeff Minter collection?!

I cover Atari specifically 24/7 on my YouTube channel, Ballistik Coffee Boy, and have been analyzing them for the past few years. The Atari 'renaissance" is here! I'm loving all the things they're doing, partnerships they're making & consoles & physical games they're releasing, as well as the amazing Atari VCS. A++

@Toastmaster The original Atari was Nolan Bushell. he and his partners sold to Time Warner when it all went belly up in 1984.
That's when the Tramiel's stepped in to buy Atari. Who was previously the man behind the Commodore 64.
in 1995 after Tramiel's son had a heart attack who was running the company back then . He returned to take the reigns, that's when he decided to merge with a disk drive manufacturer in a reverse merger.
JTC i think their name , they swallowed up all the money . Atari where not bankrupt they had just won court cases against SEGA and had millions in the bank. JTC where the ones in trouble and destroyed Atari, which was then sold to Hasbro then they sold to Infogramess. . So in all Atari have gone through many owners over the years.

Many rememebr the Tramiel years as they where responsible for the Atari ST , Atari Lynx , Jaguar and 7800.

ET HAS A LOT TO ANSWER FOR.

Atari is doing things right.

the Atari 5200 had the greatest controller but production standards back then werent ready for it. The joystick itself turned like a dial. Had number pad with game overlays. Extra side buttons. And the joysticks stayed where you moved them.

Love the visuals and fun gameplay of Yars Rising that they released. Also enjoyed playing Power Rangers Rita Rewind.

Atari has been awesome the last few years. Really solid games (I’ve especially enjoyed the Recharged games, Mr. Run and Jump, Qomp 2, Yars Rising and Kombinera, not to mention Atari 50, which is the the best retro collection ever), the 2600+/7800+, the 400 Mini, big acquisitions, official releases of cool homebrew games and long out of print/hard to find games…I know what they’re doing isn’t for everybody, but man, personally, I like them as much as any other company in gaming right now. Can’t wait to see what they plan on doing in 2025.

Oh, and I finally got a VCS when it was REALLY cheap around the holidays. Wish I had done it a few years earlier, I love it. Hard to recommend though.

Oh also, I’ve heard a few interviews with Wade Rosen on the All Things Nintendo podcast. Seems like good dude to me.

Been a big Atari fan since the 2600 was under my Xmas tree Christmas morning 1978! It was mind blowing! I was 12 and instantly hooked! Anyway, I think Wade is doing a hell of a job with the company now. Atari 50 is amazing and several recharge games are very cool. Then the 2600+ And now the 7800+ with a lineup of new games!
Also great moves acquiring Night Dive, digital eclipse, the Intellivision brand and games, and most of all imo, the acquisition of Atari Age giving them an avenue of tons of 2600 and 7800 homebrew games to republish on the plus systems like they’ve already done! So keep going Atari and MORE 7800 GAMES PLEASE!! 😊

This new Atari is what the old Atari was suppose to be like. The old Atari did not had a good leader, all it did was getting thrown around from one subsidiary to another and eventually split and died. We don't even know what happen to the second side of Atari, the one that got split and became part of Natsume.

Nice to hear some happy news in the gaming sphere outside of Nintendo, considering how many lay offs have happened recently.

@Yalloo Your welcome. I think it's weird that "Pitfall 1+2" which were one of the flagship games for Atari isn't included in the collection or DLC. Could be because it's a Activision made game, which means Microsoft owns that game now.

I will wait until the DLC cost less than 5 bucks too, but as you mention should have been included with the first one.
Microsoft added the Goldeneye remaster to all Rare Replay owners for free, 8 years later.

Not many devs do anything for free anymore.
THQ Nordic were probably the one who gave away most for free the last years, besides Microsoft.

@KITG_GROUP Jack Tramiel were important for both Atari and Commodore. Funny thing is that Commodore were the worst enemy of Atari. Commodore even became a enemy of IBM.

Jack Tramiel and the old Yamauchi at Nintendo were known as the most ruthless business men in the gaming industry in 1980's and 1990's.

Anyway. Since Infogrames were one of the oldest gaming companies still alive, i don't think it were smart to change the name. They already had several studios named Atari already and could have kept it that way.

I didn't know they bought Nightdive Studios in 2023, the masters of remasters.

@Olliemar28 And the Switch has been on TE a bunch, too

@Toastmaster Did you know at launch , Atari had over a million pre-orders for the Jaguar? , MOSTLY throughout Europe as the Atari ST was a big deal back deal .
That's why Sega and Nintendo where worried about Atari's new console.
But they chose IBM to manufacturer it who where used to churning out low numbers of Computers and not geared to a do a Launch of Million consoles. .
If it had worked Jack Tramiel's Atari might still be around.
I read years ago hundreds of retailers had to issue refunds on deposits as IBM couldn't deliver.
So while all that was going on Nintendo and Sega laughed at the thought of Sony releasing a console. and didn't really take notice. They where more worried about the rise of Atari again.

@KITG_GROUP Nope. It's weird that they didn't check if IBM had the capacity to make enough consoles. So IBM were partially to blame for Atari going out of business. Atari would have lasted longer at least if someone else could produce the consoles.
IBM later made a CPU for GameCube as you probably know.
I can see why they were worried about Atari, as they were in console business since 1970's, and survived a few things.

Another fact about Atari and E.T. It were never really a failure as everyone thinks.
It sold 2.5 - 3.5 millions or so, and were made by one person in 2 weeks. As good as no development budget.

The licensing price of E.T. were insane and would be even today.
Atari paid 20 millions for the license, and the movie budget were only 11 millions i think...

Movie licenses in general barely cost anything back then, and is why the small developer Ocean Software pushed out licensed games all the time for over a decade.

@Toastmaster Yeah the movie license thing back in the 8 bit and 16 bit days where crazy, it was Ocean that hit it big time with the Robocop license. I still have it on my Spectrum . awesome game. but there where so many bad ones. Highlander , ahhh. I bought that to.

@KITG_GROUP Yeah.

Ocean still had the largest and best "army" of legendary composers ever.

Martin Galway, Mark Cooksey, Barry Leitch, Fred Gray, Jonathan Dunn and a bunch of others.

@Toastmaster very true , i would often just sit and listen to the music at the title screens . amazing.

@KITG_GROUP
And their fantastic loading music.

No one will ever forget the famous "Ocean Loaders" that made people forget the slow loading.

In fact many wished the games kept loading forever, so they could listen to the music.

@Toastmaster some of my favs where Robocop, Taipan, Green Beret and Starglider.