14 DAY TRIAL // Publisher Atari has announced that the first quarter of the current financial year has seen it get a revenue increase of 30%, reaching 77.78 million dollars on the strength of the sales that have been generated by Ghostbusters: The Video Game and Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena.
The company has released a statement revealing that “This performance in the first quarter is mainly due to a favorable game release schedule and should not be extrapolated for the remaining of the year.”
The publisher has not unveiled what the operating profit for the period has been and whether it plans to stay in the black for the remainder of the year. Atari has been plagued by a string of disappointing quarters and its future remains in doubt.
83.5% of the revenue for the publisher was derived from the North American market with most of the money being generated by sales on the Xbox 360 from Microsoft, with the PlayStation 3 and the Nintendo Wii following. Ghostbusters: The Video Game was released on a variety of platforms in North America and the NPD Group placed it at number 11 in the sales chart for June, with about 200,000 units moved to gamers.
In Europe, the same game is at the moment only available on the PlayStation 3, following a publishing agreement with Sony. The rest of the versions will arrive later in the year and will probably give Atari another boost when it comes to sales.
In the current quarter, Atari is planning to release Qubed for the Xbox 360 and Backyard Football but the big games coming are two MMOs. Champions Online is being created by Cryptic and will offer players a chance to become superheroes, while Star Trek Online, which will probably be delayed, will enable them to experience the life of a Starfleet officer.