Atari's Last Moments?

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Looks like Atari is going to follow Interplay's lead. According to analysts, pretty much nothing can save Atari now and it's en route to slow death. It's looking to sell some studios, although important projects aren't intended to discontinue, and about a half of the American staff faces laying off. Diane Baker, the former chief financial officer resigned saying the company was shooting itself in the foot and it doesn't look like the trend is going to stop. Here's a snip:

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) – Things haven't been going well for Atari for quite some time now, but they've just taken a turn for the worse.

The publisher, once the premiere name in the gaming industry, reportedly plans to lay off a portion of its North American staff (which currently consists of 250 people) and plans to sell all of its internal studios. All of this comes as Atari's latest high profile release – "Marc Ecko's Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure" - earns less than stellar reviews from video game critics.

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The internal studios on the block have worked on some of Atari's largest releases over the past few years, including the "Driver" and "Test Drive" franchises and games based on "The Matrix" films/

Looks like Bruno's going to have a beer or two with Herve...

Read the rest at CNN.

 

How can Atari die? Every house used to have an Atari console plugged into their TV.

 

Does this means we're not going to have NWN 2?

 

Harbourboy - wrong Atari. That Atari died long ago, and Infrogames (or something like that...) picked up the name.

And now they're dying, for which I'm quite glad - because Atari are one of those sucky publishers who release half-finished games, bribe reviewers, fail to release a review version of the game before release because they know the game is ****, etc.

NWN2 may get released - but I wouldn't count on it being a full game. Probably rushed crap that Obsidian's forced to throw out complete with bugs and all the fun that comes from that - and probably no patches, because Atari won't be able to pay for them to be made...

 

Atari is just a publisher, a brand name. The people who is doing NWN2 are Obsidian and Bioware. If these companies die than you can say so is NWN2. But since they are still working, Atari can just sell NWN2 to another company which in turn will finance and publish for Obsidian and Bioware. No bigge.

 

It's Obsidian working on it (not Bioware), and that doesn't guarantee it won't get rushed, because Atari's financing it, and well, after KotOR2, I'd say it's likely that NWN2 will be a rushed half-complete piece of crap.

 

Good riddance I say.
Remember Temple of Elemental Evil? That was the last nail in the coffin for me.

 

Obsidian doesn't have the strength and reserves of BioWare, while the employes are used to working with Interplay and Atari. I suppose they don't know how far they can go without going too far, so they may give in and rush the game, releasing a buggy final version.

 

Excellent news, may they burn in hell.