Atari’s new CEO aims to resurrect the fortunes of the video game pioneer and sees the boom in remote gambling as a prime vehicle.
Once the epitome of entertainment cool with console games like Pong and Asteroids, the company is looking to rise from the dust heap of nostalgia, emerging from a bankruptcy reorganization last year with plans to partner with two startups already working in the gambling space. FlowPlay, the company behind the game “Vegas World,” is partnering on the development of “Atari Casino,” a social casino game in which players can bet with virtual money, while another startup, Pariplay will build a game of the same name where players gamble for real.
“Corporations die,” says the company’s 42-year-old boss and majority shareholder, Fred Chesnais. “Brands like Atari don’t.”
The FlowPlay and Pariplay ventures speak to the brave new world Mr Chesnais is charting for Atari, which will not to try to reclaim the top spot it held in gaming 40 years ago—a goal that has eluded other CEOs with various comeback strategies over the years—but will focus instead on licensing the brand’s considerable name value to outside studios adept at building games for today’s audiences.
And it’s a plan geared to the mobile and online markets, not consoles—“No boxes,” says Mr Chesnais—and it will include both new versions of older titles and completely new games based on trends that have emerged in the industry in the decades since “Pong” was the game to beat and Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher were household names.
A highlight will be a new version of the classic “Asteroids” in a social games format for mobile in which players have to figure out how to survive on an asteroid after their spaceship crashes into it. “So the more friends you have the better, and you can play anywhere because it’s on mobile,” says Mr Chesnais.
There will also be original content for YouTube and elsewhere under the company’s new Atari TV project. An initial foray will feature a daily video blog that trails football legend Pele throughout the World Cup currently under way in Brazil.
