Seems that the rumors, however outlandish, were right. Guess you never really can tell. Phil Harrison, longtime big name at Sony has taken on the herculean task of putting the brakes on Atari's lightspeed descent into destruction.

Phil Harrison last week announced his departure from Sony. This was a shocking move that followed some very critical comments about the Japanese branch of the company failing to capitalize on the social gaming trends he says he saw long ago. Now Harrison is taking on the challenge of helping save Atari, a company that has had a long string of problems and bad financial occurrences of late.

"This is the perfect time to join Infogrames and help shape the future of Atari - one of the industry's legendary brands. As the game business moves rapidly online I believe we have an outstanding opportunity to create amazing network game and community experiences for players the world over. I am especially excited to be working on this challenge together with David, one of the most respected leaders and successful executives in our industry."

It seems that the frustration over SCEJ's stubbornness combined with the opportunity of a nearly clean start at Atari as head honcho is what caused the move. I have little faith in Atari, but all the respect in the world for Harrison, who always seemed like a positively genius spokesperson for Sony, even in the dire straights of the PS3 launch debacle. Hopefully he can use the Atari brand to create more social gaming successes like he did at Sony with Singstar and Eyetoy.