Atari, Inc.

Atari, Inc. (Nasdaq: ATAR) is a wholly-owned (formerly majority-owned) subsidiary of Atari SA, headquartered in New York City, USA. Alongside Atari Interactive, Inc., it encompasses its North American operations. While it has the same legal name as the original Atari, their histories are separate.

It was founded as GT Interactive Software Corp. in 1990. During the 1990s, they would establish a significant publishing business and would acquire companies like FormGen, WizardWorks Group, MacSoft, Humongous Entertainment, Accolade and Legend Entertainment.

It was acquired by Infogrames (later Atari SA) on 15 November 1999.

In the 2000s, the company employed approximately 150 employees across the U.S. Infogrames Entertainment, once the majority shareholder in Atari, Inc, announced at the end of April 2008 to fully reacquire the company and bring to a closure a period of financial underperformance and making the Atari Group whole again.

Publishing

By 2003, the company's publishing business was created out of three primary publishing studios:

• Santa Monica, California - action, adventure, racing, sports games
• Beverly, Massachusetts (originally Hasbro Interactive) - strategy, simulation and children's games
• Minneapolis, Minnesota (originally GT Interactive Value Products Division) - action and adventure games for the casual audience

In 2008, the company re-organized switching to handle core publishing out of New York, with satellite offices in Santa Clara, California and Seattle, Washington.

In North America, Atari's distribution organization encompassed more than 22,000 outlets, ranging from mass merchants and superstores to specialty stores, office superstores and wholesale clubs, as well as online retailers. In addition to distributing titles developed by Atari's subsidiaries, they also distributed titles by Her Interactive, LucasArts, Strategy First, Xicat Interactive, Codemasters and others.

They would handle Atari's distribution on digital storefronts until it was replaced by Atari Interactive, Inc. around 2021.

Known subsidiaries

Names in italics used to be subsidiaries, but no longer are as they were closed or sold off.

• GT Interactive Software Value Products Division
  • distribution offices in Germany and UK (latter maybe related to One Stop Direct, acquired in 1997)
• Slash Corporation (acquired in 1995)
• FormGen (acquired in 1996)
• MacSoft (acquired in 1996 - sold to Destineer in 2003)
• Bootprint Entertainment (established in 1998)
• WizardWorks Group (acquired in 1996 - closed in 2004)
• OneZero Media (acquired in 1998)
• Home Software Benelux (acquired in 1998 - sold to Cryo Interactive in 2000)
• Humongous Entertainment (acquired in 1996 - closed in 2005 - assets sold to Tommo in 2013)
  • Cavedog Entertainment (acquired in 1996 - closed in 2000)
• SingleTrac Entertainment Technologies (acquired in 1997, inactive since 2000)
• Reflections (acquired in 1998 - sold to Ubisoft in 2006)
• Accolade (acquired in 1999, merged with Infogrames North America in 2000)
• Legend Entertainment (acquired in 1999 - closed in 2003)
• Eden Studios (acquired in 2002, closed in 2013)
• Paradigm Entertainment (acquired in 2000 - sold to THQ in 2006)
• Shiny Entertainment (acquired in 2002 - sold to Foundation 9 Entertainment in 2006)
• Cryptic Studios (acquired in 2008 - sold to Perfect World Entertainment in 2011)
• RCTO Productions (established in 2016)