Atari, which has been quite present in the news lately, acquiring the rights to publish Sam & Max and talking about the future of Baldur’s Gate, announces having acquired developer Cryptic Studios.

Cryptic is a respected development studio. It has created City of Heroes and City of Villains for NCsoft, although the studio isn’t working on the MMO anymore. It is also developing its own superhero based MMO, called Champions Online, which is set to be launched sometime later in 2009 for both the PC and the Xbox 360. The company seems to be really interested in superhero related intellectual properties, as it has also worked on a project based on Marvel comics with Microsoft. The project was cancelled, with Microsoft probably not seeing the potential of an exclusive Xbox 360 MMO.

The real excitement regarding Cryptic stems from an announcement made last year regarding the development of a new Star Trek MMO supposed to come out in 2010, which should include a full experience based on the television series. There’s real potential if the big Star Trek fan base is interested in the Cryptic made MMO. A new movie using the characters from the original series of Star Trek is coming out and a well crafted MMO will tap into the excitement created by that release.

Champions Online is set to be published under the 2K Games label, which is owned by Take Two. Probably, the Star Trek MMO will be published under the Atari brand when it is done.

The press release that announces the acquisition also points to a third game Cryptic is working on, but we currently have no information related to it. Presumably more will be revealed after the Champions Online project is complete. Could Atari be interested in another MMO or will Cryptic be focusing on a different genre?