Atari, Going Old School?

Posted on May 23, 2008 - Filed Under Casual Gaming, Editorials, Industry News |

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Phil Harrison, former main man at Sony Computer Entertainment, was hired as the president of Infogrames to transform the company and shape the direction of Atari. The future of Atari is taking a new path, perhaps into a more casual “social gaming” online style future.

In a Q&A session with Mr. Harrison, he talks about Alone in the Dark being, perhaps, one of their last huge-budget video game efforts. Although Alone in the Dark is an Infogrames title, the parent company of Atari, it does mold the direction of Atari.

Although their are plenty of titles in the pipeline for Harrison’s company, Atari will adjust its business model to meet the demands of the industry. Moving towards a community concept and packaged more into an online business (downloadable games perhaps?) and less like the shrink wrapped boxed games we’re all used to buying from Atari.

The industry transition is going “online” and Harrison says, “If we are part of that transition, perhaps we are going to take a slightly aggressive, leading-edge role in that transition.” This may be a bright future for the Atari branding which has never shined as bright as they once did in 1982, just before the video game crash of ‘83.

Although Harrison never directly states “casual games” he mentions shying away from big budget video games and focusing more on social aspects to online gaming. This means an online presents with a community aspect which doesn’t cost a large amount of cash which cancels any chance of an MMO, a move that would surely seal Atari’s fate along with its parent company Infogrames.

Looking at other industry movements, like Instant Action, from GarageGames, its clear there is an effort to move towards flash based gaming with complete network interaction and community focus. As bandwidth increases, online activities rise and gamers continue to look for cheaper alternatives for entertainment we’ll see sites like this continue to expand.

A site like Instant Action isn’t exactly a standard “game portal” which aggregates titles from many developers, but focuses on their own proprietary games and markets them as their own. We’ve seen Valve’s Steam thrive in an online presence with hit titles and partnerships with folks like PopCap (Peggle) for highly cherished downloadable content for a reasonable price.

Boxing and shrink wrapping a game costs money, marketing materials, manuals and competition leads to excessively high costs for game titles. A company like Atari, who has struggled financially, can benefit from a less-costly game development cycle much like any Indy company can.

What do they really have to lose

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4 Responses to “Atari, Going Old School?”

Atari Going Low Budget? | Game Stooge on May 23rd, 2008 6:33 pm

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Brett Seyler on May 24th, 2008 4:34 am

Great write-up. We think it’s fantastic that Atari is recognizing this trend and that they have a lot to offer the future of online gaming if they choose to embrace it and embrace it early.

A note on the information above: it’s a common misperception that InstantAction.com is a place for Flash games or only for GarageGames own titles, and that needs clarifying here. InstantAction.com is open to any developers using any technology. All games currently on the site are not Flash-based, but rather, console-quality games made with C++ game engines rendering at full speed and power by the client’s machine. For developers, there is no need to use GarageGame’s Torque engine or build the came with Flash. Games made with almost any technology (including Unreal, Quake, Java, Python, etc.) can be integrated into the platform with less effort that a typical console port. We’re working with many developers to promote digital distribution and smaller scoped games with realistic budgets through InstantAction. Of the games currently available through InstantAction now, only half have been developed by GarageGames Studios. It’s our goal to keep making the kinds of games we like to play, and publish them through InstantAction and other downloadable channels potentially. There’s real opportunity is for 3rd party developers to deliver their games streaming, right in the web, to the 260 million graphics-enabled, broadband-connected PCs out there.

-Brett Seyler
GG
Jennifer on May 24th, 2008 10:01 am

Brett,

Sorry for the mis-conception, originally we thought it was perhaps ActiveX based or something, because it won’t work on the Mac

My husband test drove some of the games at work and was instantly addicted. Perhaps this concept of “not being a flash only site” requires its own write-up!
Brett Seyler on May 24th, 2008 10:36 am

No problem Jennifer. As I mentioned, it’s just way cool to see the online gaming trend catching the interest of bigger players in the industry. If you guys have questions about InstantAction, I’m happy to help. On the Mac thing…the site really is just in beta, that’s not a gimmick Mac support is in the works. We know how difficult it is for Mac fans to find good gaming experiences so we’ll get there sooner rather than later.