Atari, one of the most famous game developers from the eighties is now facing financial collapse, as shown in its quarterly report. Claims like "substantial doubt about our ability to continue as a going concern" have surfaced expressing the Atari representative's impression on the
current situation of the company. If we have a look at this year's figures, we can see that Atari's losses for that quarter that ended on June 30, 2007 were $11.9 million, $4 million more than last year's losses.
In the meantime, revenues have decreased (in the same period of time) from last year's $19.5 million to $10.4 million. The company is considering the reduction of working capital requirement and laying off some of its employees and the suspension of some of its 2008 projects. While Atari games' fans hope for a miracle recovery of the company, Infogrames the parent company won't be able to aid them this time. Infogrames has helped Atari a number of times before, through loans and purchases of assets, but they also have limited resources.
Atari's problems caused radical decisions like selling the acclaimed Stuntman franchise to THQ, Driv3r to Ubisoft and
Timeshift to Vivendi, all of these happening last year. Well, there's still a Dragon Ball Z series to cash in on, but it seems that this will also be lost, as FUNimation, the owner of the DBZ franchise wants to end the licensing deal with Atari. If Atari becomes bankrupt, Infogrames will also have serious financial problems and the French company will have to make a few unpleasant financial adjustments of its own.
It's sad to see such a great name falling to pieces, or selling out its main assets and what concerns me most is that analysts say that
Sony is heading the same way, but it will last longer in their case.
Find us on Google+
