The current CEO of Atari, the fifth one in the last five years, has stated that his efforts to reinvent the iconic company were like dealing with a rotting onion. Jeff Lapin, who took the job last December, believes that stemming the tide has been a tremendous effort.
“It was like an old onion that smells really bad and every time you peel away one problem, you find another,” he said to the LA Times.
Atari has been struggling in recent years, losing more than $700 million since French company Infogrames took over. Last fiscal year, Atari was able to shrink its losses from 202.5 million euros to 19.4 million over a one-year period. July 2010 remained in line with expectations, posting a 65% decline in first quarter revenue year-over-year. Atari did have some hope, as online sales grew by 320%, totaling 43.5% of revenue for the company.
President Jim Wilson said: "Over the next six months you're going to see some of our best brands coming out as casual online games and digital downloads across multiple platforms, and you'll see a handful of retail releases.”
Atari plans to launch updated versions of classic titles such as Missile Command and Centipede as downloadable games that will be playable on social networks such as Facebook.
“I look at us as basically a start-up, but one with a brand everybody in the world knows and a great library of intellectual property,” Lapin said.
2 Comments
August 9, 2010
Uh, they could start by trimming the salaries of some of their so-called 'leaders'. Take a look at the salary package for Jim Wilson within Atari's corporate docs online. His single biggest accomplishment in gaming was running Vivendi Universal's game division into the ground. Pathetic.
August 10, 2010
What a great way to attract investors . . . . hey, invest in our "rotting onion" of a company! Well, props for being honest!