Atari

Atari is a corporate and brand name owned by several entities since 1972. It is currently held by Atari, Inc. (NASDAQ: ATAR), a majority owned subsidiary of Infogrames Entertainment SA (IESA), encompassing its North American operations. more...

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Atari develops, publishes and distributes games for all major video game consoles, as well as for the personal computer, and is currently one of the largest third-party publishers of video games in the United States.

The company that currently bears the Atari name was founded in 1993 under the name GT Interactive. GT Interactive was acquired by IESA in 1999, and renamed Infogrames, Inc. Infogrames acquired the Atari brand name from its purchase of Hasbro Interactive, which in turn had acquired it from JTS Corporation, which the original Atari had merged with in 1996. Initially Infogrames, Inc. intermittently used the Atari name as a brand name for selected titles before IESA officially changed the U.S. subsidiary's name to Atari, Inc. in 2003.,

The original Atari was founded in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney. It was a pioneer in arcade games, home video game consoles, and home computers. The company's products, such as PONG and the Atari 2600, helped define computer entertainment industry from the 1970s to the mid-1980s.

Atari Games was split off in 1984 with the rights to use the brand on arcade games, such as Klax, Gauntlet and Roadblasters as well as rights to the original 1972 - 1984 arcade properties.

History

Since the early days of coin operated machines, Atari has been responsible for home consoles such as the Atari 2600 (VCS); produced a series of eight-bit computers (Atari 400 & 800); taken part in the 16 bit computer revolution with the Atari ST; made the revolutionary (for its time) 64-bit Atari Jaguar; and released a hand held video game console, the Atari Lynx.

The 1970s: The rise of a video game empire

In 1966 Nolan Bushnell saw Spacewar! for the first time at the University of Utah. Deciding there was commercial potential in a coin-op version, several years later he and Ted Dabney worked on a hand-wired custom computer capable of playing it on a black and white television in a single-player mode where the player shot at two orbiting UFOs. The resulting game, Computer Space, was released by an existing coin-op game company, Nutting Associates.

Computer Space did not fare well commercially when it was placed in Nutting's customary market, bars. Feeling that the game was simply too complex for the average (potentially drunk) customer, Bushnell started looking for new ideas.

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