Atari Gobbles Up Cryptic

[The_root_of_all_evil]

Atari Gobbles Up Cryptic

City Of Heroes developers will be joining the burgeoning armada of Atari's parent company Infogrames, which has entered into a definitive agreement to purchase Cryptic Studios.

Cryptic Studios [http://crypticstudios.com/], the creators, publishers and distributors of City Of Heroes/City Of Villains as well as the forthcoming Star Trek MMO, Champions MMO and an unrevealed MMO has a strong track record, and this acquisition seems to mark Atari's climb back towards the forefront of gaming.

CoX, as it's called, has already generated $100m in lifetime revenues, and currently employs 150 professionals.

With the recent purchase of Ghostbusters as well, Atari seems to getting just a bit closer to relevance in the gaming marketplace.

Infogrames has made some really positive moves in the games market lately; the 90's saw the acquisiton of Ocean Software, Beam Software and Gremlin Graphics (c64 fans); whilst the 00's has already seen it take GT Interactive, Paradigm Interactive, Hasbro, Eden Studios and Shiny Entertainment.

Atari also lost the Unreal Tournament license back to Epic [http://www.epicgames.com/] when it joined up with Midway [http://www.midway.com/index.html]; but with Midway's massive losses, perhaps Atari will be getting that back soon, too.


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[Cousin_IT]

So wait does this mean Atari now own Cryptic or Infogrames own it as well as Atari but as seperate entities?

 

[macthorpe]

Maybe I misunderstand the article's content, but Cryptic don't own or distribute CoX any more - that pleasure is all NCSoft's.

EDIT: I'm not even sure if any CoH developers stayed with Cryptic when NCSoft bought the rights to CoX, either, with the obvious exception of Jack Emmert.

 

[Praelanthor]

well at least atari arent a souless corperation like EA or Activision

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

Maybe I misunderstand the article's content, but Cryptic don't own or distribute CoX any more - that pleasure is all NCSoft's.

Right, this is where it gets complicated.

Infogrames are a holding company that deals mainly in game companies (Sort of like Stock, Aiken and Waterman without the suck), Atari are it's flagship, but all of the former companies exist as subsidiaries of Infogrames.

Got that?

Now, whilst Infogrames buy up Cryptic, they are buying the original sellers/marketers of CoX as well as all it's tech; which is passed to Atari.
So Infogrames buy Cryptic, Atari own Cryptic's stuff.

CoX, however, has gone to NCSoft to market, as well as Jack Emmert(Statesman), but without Positron, Lord Recluse and the others, that's yet to be seen.

Or at least, that's how I see it.

 

[goncalobms]

Maybe I misunderstand the article's content, but Cryptic don't own or distribute CoX any more - that pleasure is all NCSoft's.

Right, this is where it gets complicated.

Infogrames are a holding company that deals mainly in game companies (Sort of like Stock, Aiken and Waterman without the suck), Atari are it's flagship, but all of the former companies exist as subsidiaries of Infogrames.

Got that?

Now, whilst Infogrames buy up Cryptic, they are buying the original sellers/marketers of CoX as well as all it's tech; which is passed to Atari.
So Infogrames buy Cryptic, Atari own Cryptic's stuff.

CoX, however, has gone to NCSoft to market, as well as Jack Emmert(Statesman), but without Positron, Lord Recluse and the others, that's yet to be seen.

Or at least, that's how I see it.

Or in other words ... Infogrames is the big French Mafia boss and Atari is one of his/hers henchman/woman ... Atari now owns Cryptic's stuff but both companies belong to Infogrames

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

I couldn't possibly comment

 

[goncalobms]

I couldn't possibly comment

... and you haven't