Atari
From GamerWiki
| Atari | |
| Image:Atari.jpg | |
| Country of origin: | America/France |
| Lifespan: | 1972 to ?? |
| Activities: | Console Manufacturer, Developer, Publisher |
| Website: | http://www.atari.com |
Contents |
Old Atari
The original Atari company was started by Nolan Bushnall, and famously created such games as Pong as Asteroids. It was also among the first console manufaturers, successfully making money from the Atari 2600. Bushnall sold the company to Warner Communications for around $30 million in the late 1970s.
Warner Communications Years
Although initally very successful, during 1980s the company began running into problems. It released some notoriously poor games - notable a poor ports of Pac-Man and E.T. and started to have competition with other platforms including the Mattel Intellivision.
In 1982, the company released a follow-up to the 2600 in the 5200, based on the Atari 800 computer system. It performed worse than expected, partially down to its lack of backwards compatability.
In 1983, there was the famous video games crash which caused the company huge losses. In 1984, the games devisions of the company was sold to Jack Tramiel, a former owner of Commodore, for $240 million while Warner Communications retained the arcade devision.
The company was split into Atari Corporation - for home consoles - and Atari Games for arcade games.
Jack Tramiel years
During the Jack Tramiel years, the company released the previously cancelled Atari 7800 and rereleased the 2600.
The company also had unsuccessful launches of the handheld Atari Lynx and the home console Atari Jaguar, a rival to the more powerful Sony PlayStation and Sega Saturn consoles and also lacked 3rd party support.
Trading of the Atari Name
In 1996, Atari merged with JTS Corporation - a small HDD manufacturer and no Atari products appeared until JTS sold the company name and assets in 1998 to Hasbro Interactive for $5 million. Hasbro Games were eventually sold to the French company Infogrames in late 2000. In 2001, Infogrames officially renamed themselves Atari.
