They' ve been threatened with NASDAQ de-listings multiple times, their losses are piling up ($12,000,000 net in the 2007 fiscal year alone) Their chairman/chief financial officer left earlier this year, and now news is breaking of their CEO leaving the company.

LINK

In my opinion, they don' t have jack squat on the table, and times are grim. If they don' t pull a miracle AAA title out of nowhere sometime soon, I can' t see them lasting another year.

So, is this just one more blow to a failing company? Or are they just down on their luck?

The company is not going to make it. The name Atari, however, will just be sold to another publisher (again) and there will continue to be " Atari" games.

But didn' t Atari just re aquire the DBZ rights? I mean thats goto at least be keeping them afloat.

While the name Atari used to mean something to gamers, really what have they done recently. They failed to use the name effectively to push new products. They will go, someone else may re-use the name but I guess what will it mean unless they suddenly hit the jackpot with some new IP. I guess its kind of sad (much in the same way as Commodore' s demise) but there is always fresh blood to fill the void.

Nail in the coffin for me was Driver 3. What was the last good thing they were responsible for? I cant remember...

The next step for Atari was to cease developing games. From now on they' ll only be working as a Publisher. They also sold off their only good franchise (Test Drive) to Infogrames.

As far as I know, Atari has only been a publisher, and they are owned by Infogrames. And I think at some point, someone at Infogrames realized what a dog of a name that was, and officially changed the entire company' s name to Atari.

Maybe it has something to do with Atari rehashing the same old shit....fuck ' em.

Perhaps EA will buy them like everything else

I think the greatest poetic justice would be if Activision would buy Atari. (Activision was originally founded by disgruntled Atari programmers.)

I think the greatest poetic justice would be if Activision would buy Atari. (Activision was originally founded by disgruntled Atari programmers.)

Ha, I didn' t know that.

Wikipedia-
" Prior to the formation of Activision, software for video game consoles was published exclusively by the makers of the systems for which the games were designed. For example, Atari was the only publisher of games for the Atari 2600. This was particularly galling to the developers of the games, as they received no financial rewards for games that sold well, and did not receive credit in the manuals. After watching a number of games turn into multi-million-dollar best sellers, a number of programmers decided they had had enough and left. Activision became the first third-party game publisher for game consoles."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activision

And published NBA Jam. Therefore Activision=Infinite Win

Realistically, Atari is dead. But what I' d like to see is Nolan Bushnell, resplendent in his imperial polo shirt armor astride a giant Pong paddle, leading his army of Chuck E. Cheese' s animatrons to victory against the capitalist system.

I' m going to miss this company.