Welcome to the great Atari reboot

Welcome to the nice Atari revive, Fred Chesnais has lots of ideas concerning the way to make a once-great computer game company. Among the foremost vital to the chairman and chief executive officer of Atari – the gambling complete whose cartridges, consoles and classic titles dominated the trade over forty years agone before it slowly fell into irrelevancy – is his belief that obtaining players to envision you as cool once more starts with this rule:

There’s no purpose in attempting to vie against the massive corporations or in attempting to try to to consecutive decision of Duty,” says Chesnais, UN agency bought Atari out of bankruptcy in 2013 and has been iterating a turnaround arrange since then, that the corporate continues to pursue these days.

“That’s associate degree uphill battle. the sole factor you'll do is attempt to assume forward 2, 3 and 4 years down the road – to undertake to catch consecutive wave, if you may.”

That, as an example, is why Chesnais says the corporate substitutable with retro classics like niff and Asteroids isn’t train its new releases principally to teens or solely specializing in a restricted earth science in a shot to reinvent itself. Rather, Atari’s mogul says he features a additional expansive read of wherever he needs to require the corporate – avowedly, an organization that’s a shell of its former self, using twelve individuals these days compared to a workers that numbered within the thousands in Atari’s peak – and of however he needs to induce there.

It involves things like cathartic the LGBT-themed game Pridefest within the coming back weeks, a “social-sim” game for tablets and mobile devices during which players can produce and launch their own personalised “pride parades” in cities of their selecting. within the game, players can customise parade flotillas with decorations, additionally to keeping their city engaging and happy. To unlock new parade and competition provides, similarly as receiving different bonuses, players can solve a spread of challenges and complete quests.

“It’s a awfully colourful game, and it’s a part of our new polymer as an organization of attempting to push the envelope,” Chesnais aforesaid, adding that the sport ought to be out by June.

Meanwhile, the Atari comeback he lays out additionally entails increasing the complete to different markets round the world like Brazil, that Chesnais says could be a “very significant” gambling market these days in terms of revenue. (“They love their games there.”) {and the|and therefore the|and additionally the} arrange also needs taking a broader read of the player community, with Chesnais inform to opportunities to expand the company’s audience by train some titles toward non-traditional players, like those between the ages of forty and sixty.

A critic would possibly dismiss Atari’s arrange as too indiscriminating to create a distinction. however thinking huge is that the purpose for the Atari of these days – if truth be told, Chesnais doesn’t even talk over with it as a computer game company most as associate degree “interactive recreation production company,” to use his phrase.

“We’ve additionally started the launch of a casino platform in Europe,” he says.

Teaming up with gambling technology company Pariplay, within the fall Atari proclaimed the discharge of Atari Casino, a real-money gambling web site as well as Atari-themed games across a spread of platforms.

In recent weeks, Atari additionally discharged “Atari Fit” for iOS and mechanical man devices, a fitness app that provides exercise plans and rewards users with coins which will be wont to unlock classic Atari games arthropod, niff and Super flight. the corporate additionally re-introduced its RollerCoaster mogul game last year, and in Gregorian calendar month Atari proclaimed the approaching unharness of “Asteroids: Outpost” for laptop, a re-imagining of Atari’s illustrious 1979 arcade shooter.

“We’ve additionally accredited a number of our IP to Hollywood,” Chesnais says. “Our vision is extremely straightforward. It’s to stay increasing the complete within the recreation house and on a worldwide scale.”

It helps, of course, once yours could be a complete that touches a deep undercurrent of yearning among gamers of a precise vintage. Indeed, Atari co-founder Nolan David Bushnell tells BGR there was one thing special concerning Atari from the start, which it still features a path toward connexion these days.

“Anytime you've got associate degree painting complete, that helps,” aforesaid David Bushnell, UN agency sold-out Atari to Warner Communications in 1976 – the primary during a long and tortuously sophisticated chain of possession that might end in the Atari that Chesnais leads these days.

“To the extent they are doing smart engineering, smart style – they need each chance to be an honest success. can they be another Microsoft or Sony? in all probability not. however they may simply be a Zynga, capturing smart games with the proper dynamics.”

One factor that won’t be a part of the company’s future, Chesnais says, could be a console. however that’s to not say Atari doesn’t see a future in hardware. Not desirous to spill an excessive amount of, Chesnais points to a tool just like the Apple Watch – it’s not a console, however it's hardware on the lines of wherever Atari envisions its efforts presumably going.

“We’re simply attempting to try to to the proper factor for the complete,” Chesnais says. “We’re creating mistakes. We’re attempting to be terribly humble, attempting and testing the market. We’ve had an excellent success with RollerCoaster mogul, less success with different games. As long as we have a tendency to’re humble and check out to concentrate to the community modification|and alter} things once they got to change – that’s however we work. It simply takes time, that’s all.”
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