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Classic Games (Games) Entertainment Games

Infogrames Officially Changes Name To Atari 48

Posted by simoniker from the cruising-round-los-angeles-astride-his-harley dept.
According to this story from Reuters via Yahoo News, Infogrames is now officially changing its name to Atari worldwide. The French publisher originally picked up the home rights to the Atari name after buying Hasbro Interactive in 2001, and had recently been rebranding much of its line-up (even PC RPGs) with the Atari logo alongside the Infogrames one. Lovable French ruffian and Atari CEO Bruno Bonnell will open the Nasdaq stock exchange on Wednesday morning to herald the new ATAR stock ticker symbol for the company.
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Infogrames Officially Changes Name To Atari More

Infogrames Officially Changes Name To Atari

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  • No atari t-shirts? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by PinkX ( 607183 ) on Wednesday May 07, 2003 @03:28AM (#5899171) Homepage
    So does this means that we won't be able to get any more unofficial Atari t-shirts with the Atari logo on it?

    On a side note, the slashdot guys couldn't have chosen an uglier color scheme for the games [slashdot.org] section of the site?

    • Re:No atari t-shirts? (Score:3, Informative)

      by gl4ss ( 559668 )
      what makes you think that you could get them before any more better than now?-) like, they owned the rights to it before the full name change as well, and used the logo too.

      while at the alternative-party they gave away atari shirts(they had atari/infogrames as sponsor) as prizes. funny thing was that there was this one infogrames employee who attended(and won one competition, and got a tshirt among other things) and when rewarded told that he had tried to get an atari t-shirt for a long time but couldnt g

      • Re:No atari t-shirts? (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Tink2000 ( 524407 )
        Apple has the same issues... I worked for a University bookstore where you had to go if you wanted to get a Mac anywhere in about a 60 mile radius. I was also a rather staunch PC owner but enthusiastic Mac supporter. People who bought machines could get the shirts occasionally (read as: if they showed up to pick up their machine and our Mac corporate guy happened to be there, and they happened to beg for a while). But still, I interfaced with the general public for 40 hours a week, you'd think the rep would

    • Get them here (Score:3, Informative)

      by TomatoMan ( 93630 )
      Urban Outfitters [urbanoutfitters.com] has a nice one here [urbanoutfitters.com] (site uses stupid frames, this link is to the item out of its enclosing frame). Mine is dark blue, and the yellow Atari logo is fuzzy like those blacklight posters of the 70s. Perfect.
    • 1. Use Opera.
      2. Click on the little icon that switches the view into "User mode" - 3rd icon from the left.

      --Not perfect, but it works.
  • Give us something cool for once.
  • Atari: no matter how many time you kill it... it will be back in a while...

    ever played Doom with respawn...

    not so bad for a company that since jaguar has vintage t-shirt as core businness

  • PA (Score:2)

    by Hadlock ( 143607 )
    Hmm, I see a continuity break in Penny Arcade in the near future.

  • The Incarnations of Atari (Score:5, Interesting)

    by fm6 ( 162816 ) on Wednesday May 07, 2003 @04:04AM (#5899301) Homepage Journal
    • Founded by Nolan Bushnell (1972).
    • Sold to Warner Communications (predecessor of AOL-Time-Warner) 1975.
    • Warner splits Atari into Home and Arcade divisions. Jack Trammiel, founder (forcibly retired) of Commodore buys Home division, forms Atari Computer Corp. (1984)
    • Arcade division gets renamed Atari Games, then Atari/Tengen, then Time Warner Interactive, then gets sold to Williams/WMS, which sells it to Midway, which renames it Midway Games West! (Dates and veracity dubious!)
    • Atari Computer Corp merges with disk drive maker JTS (1996)
    • JTS/Atari sells its "Atari assets" to Hasbro Interactive (1998).
    • Hasbro Interactive absorbed by Infogrammes Entertainment SA as part of malicious French conspiracy. Renamed Infogrammes Interactive. (2001)
    • Infogrammes Entertainment renames its North American acquistions "Atari". (2003)
    • Chuck E Cheese buys Infogrammes Entertainment SA, renames it "Freedom Software" (2004).
    In researching this timeline, I made a truely mind-boggling discovery: Atari was briefly in the engineering/scientific/graphics workstation business [atarimuseum.com]!
    • Atari was briefly in the engineering/scientific/graphics workstation business!

      Imagine a beowulf cluster of Transputers [atarimuseum.com]!
    • Jack Trammiel, founder (forcibly retired) of Commodore

      Hmmm...my understanding was that Jack had always said that he'd sell the company when it hit $10 million (or some such figure) because it would be too big to be any fun, so it did and he did.
    • Midway also recently shut down the "Midway Games West" division, prompting a wave of "Atari goes out of business" articles.

      In researching this timeline, I made a truely mind-boggling discovery: Atari was briefly in the engineering/scientific/graphics workstation business [atarimuseum.com]!

      Yep, They also made unsuccessful PC clones at one point. Tramiel's Atari tried lots of things that ultimately failed. They didn't have the resources to pull them off.

      Also, in the Warner days, Atari was rumored to

      • Yep, it was called the MindLink. Atari never released it but you can still find prototypes if you are an avid collector. It worked by muscle impulses meaning that you had to squint and contort your face to control the game. You can read about it here www.classicgaming.com [classicgaming.com]

      • They also made unsuccessful PC clones at one point. Tramiel's Atari tried lots of things that ultimately failed. They didn't have the resources to pull them off.

        It's not just resources. Selling brand-name clones requires huge economies of scale and strong marketting savvy. Every proprietary system maker has tried to switch over at one point or another. (The latest was SGI, just a couple years ago.) The only successes I can think of are HP and of course IBM itself.

        Also, in the Warner days, Atari was rumor

  • I'm okay with this. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pommaq ( 527441 ) <<straffaren> <at> <spray.se>> on Wednesday May 07, 2003 @05:18AM (#5899532) Homepage
    Well, the Infogrames armadillo was cool and all, but that "Fuji" logo is simply one of the most beautiful pieces of graphic design ever.
    EVER.

  • Trying to hide shame behind a proud name (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Nice2Cats ( 557310 ) on Wednesday May 07, 2003 @07:12AM (#5899775)
    Infogrames just screwed up the release of Master of Orion 3 big time -- the game is a disaster [kuro5hin.org] and they still haven't released even the first code patch for it after, what now, two months? To say I now avoid products with that name is an understatement.

    Now, Atari -- I still have my Atari ST downstairs, and from time to time I plug it in, boot it and cry a little over the clean, crisp picture on the screen, the ease of use, and how unfair the world in general is. I could even do uucp with that machine, and if it only had had a MMU...and if only IBM hadn't bought MS DOS...if only pigs could fly...

    Shame, shame, shame on Infogrames for dragging Atari down into the muck with them. Of course, it won't help: The Brits tried renaming their continuous disaster of a nuclear plant "Windscale" [betterworldlinks.org] to "Sellafield" (or vice versa, I keep forgetting) but that didn't fool people one bit.

    • I highly doubt that Infogrames is undergoing the name change in the US to dodge scorn from pissed off customers over MOO3. Don't disagree with MOO3 being crap, but Infogrames has far bigger fish than that.

      I suspect it has a lot more to do with appearing to be less French to the American game market. The country-wide unspoken, unorganized boycott of things appearing to be too French is really hurting French businesses. Not fatally, but it's leaving a mark. Just seems strange when they out of the blue ta
      • Not fatally, but it's leaving a mark. Just seems strange when they out of the blue take on the name that's as American as apple pie and blue jeans to most gamers in the States.

        The name "Atari" is actually Japanese, I think. It was taken from the game, "Go".

        I also recall seeing a Japanese movie on MST3K where one of the characters was "Mr. Atari".

    • Yes, MOO3 is crap, but infogrammes has published some really excellent titles too. Including Civ3 and Neverwinter Nights. I think they are just trying to use a name that gives warm fuzzies to us old-school types. Their challenge now is to not ruin the atari name by publishing more crap like moo3.
    • First, i don't think many people care about MOO3 all that much - certainly not enough for a corporate name change. :)

      Second, MOO3 is GREAT (to me). There's a high learning curve (in that you have to get your mind into the system) - but it's incredibly fun in it's current incarnation. Sure, i'll get the code patch when it comes out - but i love this game even without the data patch that's already out.

      Lots of people gave, what seems to me, instant reactions to a hard core strategy game. But if you spend som

    • Now, Atari -- I still have my Atari ST downstairs, and from time to time I plug it in, boot it and cry a little over the clean, crisp picture on the screen, the ease of use, and how unfair the world in general is. I could even do uucp with that machine, and if it only had had a MMU...and if only IBM hadn't bought MS DOS...if only pigs could fly...

      Ease of use? I always found Atari's GEM implementation hopelessly frustrating, at least if you wanted to do anything more than launch programs.

      Still, if y

  • The official pronunciation of the famous brand name "ATARI" was changed today to "eh-tar-REEE". Persons caught using the old pronunciation will have a 2600 joystick shoved in a convenient orifice.

  • A slap in the face... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by NetDanzr ( 619387 ) on Wednesday May 07, 2003 @09:10AM (#5900232)
    As a longtime Atari fan, I consider this to be a slap in the face. Having barely recovered from the slap caused by Spectrum Holobyte changing its name to Mindscape in 1995, now I need to suffer the gaming company with the worst tech support out there to appropriate the name Atari. Up to this day, Atari had a relatively good reputation, which now goes down the drain.
    • Atari had a good reputation for tech support?

      Boy, you never owned an Atari ST, did you?
      • Actually, I did, and never had a problem with. However, I was more thinking about the bugginess of Infogrames games and Atari games. I have a whole bunch of games by Infogrames that are so buggy that I either couldn't finish them (Silver) or voluntarily uninstalled and sold on eBay (Civilization III, the Play the World expansion, Master of Orion III to name a few). For some reason, I can still play old Atari ROMs and have much more fun with them.

        Speaking of old Atari ROMs: it will be interesting to see

        • Seems a bit unfair to blame Infogrames for Civ III, considering it was developed by Firaxis just like Civ II was, and they're just the distributors. Also, what do you mean by buggy? Firaxis have made lots of small gameplay fixes, but that happened with SMAC too.
          • You are right that the developer was Firaxis. The same Firaxis that did a much better job with Sid Meier's SimGolf, published by Electronic Arts. And the same Firaxis that blamed Infogrames for all the problems with the game. There were four or five patches for Civ III, with the first one appearing the day the game was released (interestingly, the same happened with another game published by Infogrames - Neverwinter Nights), fixing lots of crash and display issues. When Play the World came along, users

  • They should really produce side-scrolling games. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mnmn ( 145599 ) on Wednesday May 07, 2003 @09:23AM (#5900320) Homepage

    I'm happy about the reincarnation of this brand name, now I just hope they dont just run blindly after technologies like ID software, and stick to some old Atari style games. Theres definitely a market and the brand name is well respected. People miss it.
  • ...all I want to know is when is Pong 2 finally gonna come out?
  • Have you played Atari today?

    Just let it die already. The glory days of Atari are way past gone...

  • ...Infogrammes went on a massive buying spree and scored an amazing deal when they took Hasbro's properties.

    Hasbro figured out it couldn't make video games so they dumped EVERYTHING. For a million cash and a bunch of now worthless stock, Infogrammes tied up the electronic rights to EVERY Hasbro property for nigh on fifteen years (that's Wizards of the Coast (TSR and all), Avalon Hill, Transformers, etc.).

    I wouldn't be so irritated if they exploited these brands properly. However, up until this point Info

  • Brand Recognition (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Torvo ( 559242 )
    It's less about the history of what has been produced under the Atari name & logo than it is about the relative recognize-ability of the logo and name. Yes, the Infogrames Armadillo (or "floating potato" as one of its incarnations was known) is reasonably well known amongst gamers, but the Atari name and logo are burned into the collective American consciousness as a video game brand. Infogrames has been spending huge buckets of dollars to get people to recognize and accept their branding (as well as s
  • Does any of ye know if ATARI actually stands for anything or is just y'know.. a name.
    • The original name of Atari was Syzygy but the name was already taken. Bushnell and Dabney were both players of Go, a Japanese strategy game, so they took a list of words from that game: Sente(which means "the upper hand"), Atari(similar to "Check" in English) and Hanne(an overtaking move). Atari was the only one that was approved by the Office of the Secretary of State in California. Look here [atari-explorer.com] for more details.
  • My Atari t-shirt went from retro to contemporary in one click of the refresh button.

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