Infogrames has decided to change their name to Atari, spurring a number of radical changes to the company. They had bought out Atari back in March of 2008, but has recently decided to “make the best use of the Atari brand,” something that is much stronger than Infogrames, I must admit.
And one of their first actions? Cut out Phil Harrison as the president of the company. The reason for this, says Atari, is because they are moving to a US-based operation, and so they are moving Harrison to a non-executive director position — something that sounds awfully ceremonial. But, in the end, it makes sense, as the company needs someone who is much more focused on the US market, as opposed to Harrison’s European sensibilities.
For right now, they’ve promoted Jeff Lapin to COO of Atari, who will work with CEO David Gardner to lead the business. They’ve got a tough time ahead of them, though. Atari came out with its financials, and they’re not looking too good. Their net loss for the fiscal year came to nearly $320 million, after pulling out of European and Asian markets. These are non-recurring costs, but it’s still a blow to the company, whose losses still total $70 million, if you take out the non-recurring items.
Atari is predicting that it will break even or see a small profit in this next fiscal year, although there’s some wonder about that. They’re saying that they plan on focusing on longer-subscription models and web-based content, and even moving almost entirely to digital distribution. It’ll cut down on their overhead, for certain.
The company is looking to streamline itself, and as we know, they aren’t appearing at E3, but they will be announcing titles later in the year, they say. They’ve got Cryptic, who they recently acquired, working on an MMO version of a classic Atari IP. Let’s see how things go from here.
