After years of meandering messages and threats of bankruptcies, Atari SA looks to be finally turning the corner with a renewed focus on retro.
If this wasn’t clear enough with the launch of the magnificent Atari 50 compilation in 2022 and the recent release of the emulation-based Atari 2600+ (more on that from our pals over at Time Extension), its CEO Wade Rosen has reiterated the firm’s commitment to retro in an interview with GamesIndustry.biz.
Rosen states that Atari is not looking to compete with the likes of Sony, Microsoft, or Nintendo, but rather focuses on what it can do better than anyone else: retro. Here’s exactly what Rosen had to say:
“As an organization when I came on board, the question was, ‘What can we do better than anyone else in the world?’ And we’re not in a state to really compete with Microsoft or Sony or Nintendo, nor do we want to. So when we looked and asked what we could do better than anyone, retro was the thing that jumped out to us, at least at this stage in our history. So we just decided to be as great as we could at this very specific thing and that’s what we’ve been focused on.”
This will no doubt bring a certain degree of relief to passionate Atari fans concerned about the company’s relevance in 2023.
Rosen also goes into extensive detail regarding Atari’s recent acquisitions, including Digital Eclipse and Nightdive Studios. He states that the pair won’t be mandated to create specific Atari-related products, and may even work together on certain projects:
“I think both [Digital Eclipse and Nightdive] share the same DNA with Atari of focusing on a niche and trying to be really good at something rather than trying to be OK at a lot of different things. That made it easy. And the fact that niche was in the same space we really want to be good at – these two are arguably two of the best retro companies in the world – it made a lot of sense to bring those together.”
Needless to say, we’re certainly curious to see what Atari comes out with in the coming months and years.
What do you make of Wade Rosen’s comments on Atari’s current approach? Do you think it will work out for the company? Let us know with a comment down below.
[source gamesindustry.biz]