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Atari is making a comeback. The big american name is now french.
After years of nothing, along comes atari, again.
Atari, often thought of as the inventor of video games has bounced around a lot.
Atari was dreamed up by nolan bushnell (in 1972) who had a good brain for games but maybe not as good with business sense. Arcade games (pong in particular) came first as did some stand alone consoles that would only play one game only.
Atari released the 2600 vcs in about 1977 and made a lot of money from it, under the owner ship of time warner, who bought atari for $28 MILLION in 1976. Bushnell stayed on for 2 years as chairman then leaving with a golden handshake.
Time warner made some money with atari and some dreadful loses too so the sold it to the Tramiel ( not vermiel ) family, in 1984ish I think. Then came the atari st in the mid 80's. After that minor sucess atari tried the console route again with the lynx and jaguar. Both failed.
Sold. To little known component manafacturer JTS who just wanted the name and some copyrights.
Sold. To hasbro interactive, who used a few ols atari games in compilations.
But now. french software company infogrames has bought the name. No more consoles, just new software.
The 3 pronged atari logo is the most famous logo in video games history. Infrogames are going to release much new software with this logo on it. Not many companies get the chance to re invent a company with this much heritage. The logo makes a welcome return to the market place for atari, who still have many fans despite them disappearing for many years.
Watch this space.
After years of nothing, along comes atari, again.
Atari, often thought of as the inventor of video games has bounced around a lot.
Atari was dreamed up by nolan bushnell (in 1972) who had a good brain for games but maybe not as good with business sense. Arcade games (pong in particular) came first as did some stand alone consoles that would only play one game only.
Atari released the 2600 vcs in about 1977 and made a lot of money from it, under the owner ship of time warner, who bought atari for $28 MILLION in 1976. Bushnell stayed on for 2 years as chairman then leaving with a golden handshake.
Time warner made some money with atari and some dreadful loses too so the sold it to the Tramiel ( not vermiel ) family, in 1984ish I think. Then came the atari st in the mid 80's. After that minor sucess atari tried the console route again with the lynx and jaguar. Both failed.
Sold. To little known component manafacturer JTS who just wanted the name and some copyrights.
Sold. To hasbro interactive, who used a few ols atari games in compilations.
But now. french software company infogrames has bought the name. No more consoles, just new software.
The 3 pronged atari logo is the most famous logo in video games history. Infrogames are going to release much new software with this logo on it. Not many companies get the chance to re invent a company with this much heritage. The logo makes a welcome return to the market place for atari, who still have many fans despite them disappearing for many years.
Watch this space.
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