Atari once ruled the home video-game console industry. First kids sprinted home after school to play Pong in the mid-’70s and then they threw their books down to grab their joysticks and take all the bricks of Breakout, blow up oncoming Asteroids, or take Activision’s Pitfall Harry through a jungle maze.
These days, of course, digital games are everywhere and Atari has been feeling the financial strain for more than a decade, as hinted on its Facebook page on January 17th (above).
Fast forward to January 21st, when its U.S. division announced it's filing for bankruptcy in order to separate itself from the French-owned Atari S.A. (formerly known as Infogrames), which is deep in debt, and focus on digital and mobile gaming.
After breaking free, Atari’s U.S. leaders hope to “find a buyer to take the company private” in the next few months, theChicago Tribune reported, and “grow a modest business focused on digital and mobile platforms.” The move comes as Disney gets ready to launch its Infinity console in June.
Atari currently only has 40 employees in the U.S. and is focused on creating games for mobile and web platforms. Seventeen percent of the company’s revenue comes from the licensing of the Atari logo for consumer products.
TheNextWeb noted that the U.S. arm of Atari is “seeking approval for $5.25 million in financing from Tenor Capital Management in order to ‘minimize any disruption of [its] day-to-day operations.’”
It seems, though, that things have been disrupted plenty over there since a “$28 million credit facility with (London-based BlueBay Asset Management) lapsed Dec. 31 (and left) Atari without the resources to release games currently in the works, including a real-money gambling title titled ‘Atari Casino,’” the Tribune reports.
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