Atari and THQ Show Mixed Financials, Game Details

An anonymous reader writes "GameMethod reports that for the fiscal 2004 first quarter, Atari announced that net revenues and income were down from last fiscal year, but still positive. Strong sales of [the somewhat controversial] Driv3r for both PlayStation 2 and Xbox are being cited as the main success, but the dip in comparative figures is being attributed to last year's release of Enter the Matrix, Atari's commercially successful (over 5 million units sold), yet critically jeered game. [Atari's Bruno Bonnell commented on the loss of the Unreal license that Epic's proposed deal was 'not acceptable from a profit point of view for our strategy.'] On the flip side, despite a net loss of $3.9 million for the fiscal first quarter of 2005, THQ announced a positive outlook for the remainder of the fiscal year. Full Spectrum Warrior for Xbox drove sales for the quarter, ranking as the top selling Xbox game and the second best selling title for the month of June."

Atari and game releases

[schnits0r]

I don't know, as long as atari keeps releaseing fine games like ET The Extraterrestrial, I don't see why their profits should decrease.

Full Spectrum Warrior

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not surprised Full Spectrum Warrior sold well. It's a great game, with superb graphics and loads of atmosphere. However, I'm a bit taken aback by what it says about US Army tactical training techniques.

First of all, if you haven't played the game, I should make something clear. This is NOT a realism-shooter. When I bought it, I was expecting something broadly along the lines of the Rainbow Six games. However, it's nothing like this. Essentially, it's a military-themed puzzle game. Your soldiers behave

Bruno's Dreamland...

[TheSwink]

Um, excuse me? Five million copies of Enter the Matrix sold? According to whom? I'd love to see some credible statistics for this. The last figure I'd heard was two million and even that, to put it lightly, strained credibility . Even then there was some fine print about 'units shipped' which any retailer will tell you has very little to with units sold.

To put that in perspective:

Super Mario 64 - 5.94
Grand Theft Auto 3 - 5.35 (million copies sold)
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 - 2.63
Metal Gear Solid - 2.43
Enter the Matrix - 5 million(?)

Which one of these things...is not like the others? Admittedly these numbers are US sales, perhaps Enter the Matrix sold these ridiculous millions of copies in Europe and Asia. Again, though, that seems somewhat implausible.

Also, as anyone with any sort of business acumen will tell you, units sold speaks very little about net profit. And let's not forget that Shiny reportedly paid $10 million for the Matrix license. What's that smell? Ah...fresh books. Delish.

I guess my only real reason for writing this is that I find Bonell to be somewhat unsavory and feel somewhat unnerved by the possibility that anyone takes him or his company at their word. He strikes me as something of a con man. I don't like that he bought and is now wearing Atari's rough-sewn skin as a branding rain-slicker and I don't like his comments about the future of gaming what games are supposed to be:
http://www.nytimes.com/auth/login?URI=http://www.n ytimes.com/2003/12/21/magazine/21GAMES.html [nytimes.com]
For an excellent summation of why Bonnell's comments are a proverbial avalanche of bullshit:
http://www.costik.com/weblog/2003_12_01_blogchive. html [costik.com]

Anyhow, the only point of that rather shallow tirade was that I sincerely hope no burgeoning game designers are being led astray by the parade of delusion that is Infogrames' press releases.

By the way, the source on those statistics is http://www.the-magicbox.com/Chart-USPlatinum.shtml [the-magicbox.com]

Re:Bruno's Dreamland...

[Anonymous Coward]

Which one of these things...is not like the others?

Well, Enter the Matrix is, because it was on four major platforms (PS2, Xbox, GC, PC). The rest of your numbers are for one game on one platform. Hell, the chart you quoted said Enter the Matrix sold ~1.2 million copies in the US, on the PS2.

...I sincerely hope no burgeoning game designers are being led astray by the parade of delusion that is Infogrames' press releases.

I hope people will take ALL press releases with a grain of salt.

That Epic deal...

[KDR_11k]

What did Atari not like about Epic's deal? Did Epic want as much time as they needed to make the game and Atari wanted them to throw out half-finished games instead? Did Epic want a share of the profits? I mean, it's the same guy who claimed that Enter The Matrix shouldn't pay extra (his comment on the WB "higher royalities for bad games" thing, he didn't have to pay, but if WB had that system in place earlier he would have had to) for brand damage since it sold really well (I'd call that "even more damage").

Re:That Epic deal...

[AzraelKans]

Easy.. Epic wanted to earn part of the money, Atari wanted to keep all the money for themselves, that definetily is not good for their profit!

No, seriously probably is Epic the one who dumped atari, they have been doing all kind of bad decisions this year. Is pretty obvious they forced reflections to release driv3r before time. Maybe epic noticed they could be next and started looking for another publisher.
Remember EPIC is working on the Unreal 3 engine and is going to take a LOT of time to get it done

Re:That Epic deal...

[CashCarSTAR]

From HardOCPs hardware preview of Doom 3...

It's going to be tough to compete with that engine, and it's going to take a lot of time.

Smackdown SYM

[superpulpsicle]

When Smackdown "shut your mouth" came out from THQ, it was revolutionary. A wrestling game with 60 modes and insane number of features and wrestler. They didn't really go anywhere new with "Here comes the pain".

They need to bring back another superb smackdown with even more of everything. There is still so much room to improve.