14 DAY TRIAL // The new CEO of Infogrames, parent company of Atari, is David Gardner, a veteran of Electronic Arts. And his initial plans are very ambitious. He wants to move the Atari business model into on-line gaming, setting his sights on concepts such as secure server-based gaming and the free-to-play market.
He thinks a game company can only reinvent itself by offering a variety of experiences, at the same time with a clear feedback loop available, so that players can communicate their ideas and comments quickly and the company can redesign its offering around them.
For Gardner, the future is all about not having to wait. The main drawback of today's digital distribution services, he thinks, are the rather long waiting times. It is easier for the player to go into a nearby game, shop and pick up a boxed title than wait. Atari will try and do away with waiting by creating Internet-based games that do not get fully installed on the user's computer.
He sees the games of the future like "thin clients", where the game engine is hosted on a server owned by Atari and the user only needs to process the visual and audio needed by the game experience.
Another advantage of such a setup would be that resources needed to play games would be lower, as most of the heavy lifting is done by the Atari server and not the home computer. The company that can offer ease of use is the company that will dominate tomorrow's game market.
Gardner has also declared that Atari will heavily focus on extracting the best intellectual property from its sizeable back catalog. It will then work on recreating old classics of the 1980s and 1990s to release them to a whole new generation of gamers.
The new CEO of Infogrames thinks it is easier to produce high quality content for an already existing IP rather than building a game universe from the ground up.
With a new leadership in place and big ideas being floated around, Atari may well become one of the most important companies in the game market of the future.