Atari Acquires Accolade Brand and IP to Over 100 Games

[DeathAdderSF]

On 4/22/2023 at 12:05 PM, MrMaddog said:

 

 

Catch you on the flip side, dudemeisters!

 

NOT!!

Edited December 20, 2023 by DeathAdderSF

[zzip]

On 5/4/2023 at 4:11 PM, jeremiahjt said:

I would really like to get the full list of games from this acquisition. How did the full list of Stern games become known?

The told us they acquired 9 games from Stern, so it was just a process of elimination of removing the Konami games from the Stern arcade list, and there were 9 left

 

[+jeremiahjt]

1 hour ago, zzip said:

The told us they acquired 9 games from Stern, so it was just a process of elimination of removing the Konami games from the Stern arcade list, and there were 9 left

 

No, they released the list of 12 games. We were trying to figure it out in the thread and there were 10 obvious games, but the last two were not. Atari then released the full list after I think a media member asked them for it.

[82-T/A]

On 4/20/2023 at 11:59 AM, jgkspsx said:

These were the games Tommo bought out of the Atari bankruptcy:

 

 

 

I don't see Test Drive in there... but I'd love to see a new Test Drive. I don't know... most of the Test Drives I've seen, like.. Need for Speed, seem to be plot-based or something. I liked Need for Speed Porsche Unleashed... but most of the other ones I just really couldn't get into. I really liked the original Test Drives... 1 and 2 for DOS, but Test Drive 3 was great... I spent so many hours playing that... it had that open world feel... even if by today's standards, the graphics are horrendous.

[+jgkspsx]

EA owns Test Drive now, and the originals need the Car and Driver license too.

[zzip]

1 hour ago, 82-T/A said:

 

 

I don't see Test Drive in there... but I'd love to see a new Test Drive. I don't know... most of the Test Drives I've seen, like.. Need for Speed, seem to be plot-based or something. I liked Need for Speed Porsche Unleashed... but most of the other ones I just really couldn't get into. I really liked the original Test Drives... 1 and 2 for DOS, but Test Drive 3 was great... I spent so many hours playing that... it had that open world feel... even if by today's standards, the graphics are horrendous.

There is a new Test Drive game in development -   Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown  https://testdriveunlimited.com/en-US

 

A lot of modern racing games are plot-based,  but even worse, I've noticed in the past 5-7 years the objective in many racing games seems to focus on gaining social media followers after every event,  ugh no thanks!

[Bill Loguidice]

I don't think we'd want a game like Test Drive with Atari anyway. They only have the resources for small-scale, lower-end games (which has become their niche). That's not really suitable to a relatively big IP like Test Drive. 

[Atariboy]

8 hours ago, jgkspsx said:

EA owns Test Drive now, and the originals need the Car and Driver license too.

No, they don't own it. Atari SA sold the IP to Bigben Interactive (Now going by the name Nacon), with developer Kylotonn handling development duties for Test Drive Solar Crown.

 

And as for Car and Driver, why would they be involved?

[PowerDubs]

18 minutes ago, Bill Loguidice said:

I don't think we'd want a game like Test Drive with Atari anyway. They only have the resources for small-scale, lower-end games (which has become their niche). That's not really suitable to a relatively big IP like Test Drive. 

 

You may be underestimating who now works under the Atari corporate umbrella. 

[Bill Loguidice]

24 minutes ago, PowerDubs said:

 

You may be underestimating who now works under the Atari corporate umbrella. 

I don't think who they have working for them changes their per-game budget, but I'll be happy to be proven wrong in the future. Until then, I'm sure we'll get more low-budget stuff like we've been. That seems to do well for them, so straying from that would be quite odd at this point.

[PowerDubs]

I misunderstood your resources to mean they don't have the people / talent / capability.

 

They have those resources.

 

And as for funding....well, Wade does what he wants with that as well.

 

He's video games version of (earlier, quieter) Musk. 

 

Born to rich parents... smart...driven...hiring the right people to build out his dreams. 

[+Stephen]

2 hours ago, PowerDubs said:

I misunderstood your resources to mean they don't have the people / talent / capability.

 

They have those resources.

 

And as for funding....well, Wade does what he wants with that as well.

 

He's video games version of (earlier, quieter) Musk. 

 

Born to rich parents... smart...driven...hiring the right people to build out his dreams. 

More like Tony Khan.  Spending as much of his dad's money as he wants with no regards to making a profit, and seen as a goof to most outsiders.

[PowerDubs]

Ummm... revenue was up 50% last report.

 

Net was down due to the building / paying Nightdive earn out, etc.

 

Watch what happens in June.  

[+jgkspsx]

6 hours ago, Atariboy said:

And as for Car and Driver, why would they be involved?

Oh geez, was thinking Need for Speed.

[Matt_B]

Revenue is up 50% because they're already counting that of Night Dive. Otherwise, it's basically flat.

If Atari's only means of growth continues to be acquisitions, it'll be a long while before they're profitable. Wade will do fine out of it though, while he's paying himself interest on those loans.

[+Stephen]

45 minutes ago, Matt_B said:

If Atari's only means of growth continues to be acquisitions, it'll be a long while before they're profitable. Wade will do fine out of it though, while he's paying himself interest on those loans.

But the penny stock shillers can stroke themselves watching a $0.12 stock rise to a $0.30 one!  Think of all the Atari supporters making literal dollars, while the behind the scenes paper pushers playing with toy money make millions.  What's not to love!

 

[Warboss Gegguz]

This would be very cool if I knew anything about Accolade beyond giving us Bubsy.

Like, are their any other noteworthy IPs or...?

13 hours ago, Stephen said:

But the penny stock shillers can stroke themselves watching a $0.12 stock rise to a $0.30 one!  Think of all the Atari supporters making literal dollars, while the behind the scenes paper pushers playing with toy money make millions.  What's not to love!

The funniest part about this to me when it comes to the penny stock shillers here (or really just penny stock shillers in general) as someone who works in finance is that when you buy penny stock it's ideally supposed to be an upstart with relatively few shares. Not, ya know, a 30+ year old multinational company with tens of thousands of shares. Your ROI is going to be a joke regardless of how successful they are since they have so much shit is already issued + it being so old and so large usually indicates that the value won't be increasing substantially EVER.

 

If you're looking for high-risk/high-reward, a HUGE company isn't really where you go. Maybe if you were looking to short your stock I would say invest in a company that went bankrupt twice, but otherwise you're better off playing literal slots than gambling on this company. At least slots have a timed payout. And they cost about as much to play as Atari's share price, lol.

[Warboss Gegguz]

14 hours ago, Matt_B said:

Revenue is up 50% because they're already counting that of Night Dive. Otherwise, it's basically flat.

Basically why they acquired Night Dive and DE: 2 small studios that are making bank but are in need of some form of upper management for the sake of legalese and oversight. Night Dive wants to have a steady stream of capital and labor so their games don't take 7 years to come out, and Atari needs a studio with better PR and that's actually making money.

The choice of acquisitions along with divesting from insanely stupid business decisions are the only things that give me hope for the new leadership in all honesty, lol.

 

Flat revenue is fine. Most companies report flat revenue because otherwise the IRS smells blood in the water and comes rushing for a cut. Revenue we're seeing will be allocated to "expenses" in due time. Unless the company enjoys getting pounded in the ass by the feds at least. But the fact that newly acquiring night dive has already offset the costs of buying ND and DE in the first place should show why that was probably the best decision Atari has made in the past 10-15 years or so.

 

14 hours ago, Matt_B said:

If Atari's only means of growth continues to be acquisitions, it'll be a long while before they're profitable. Wade will do fine out of it though, while he's paying himself interest on those loans.

If they'd bought devs with shakier ROI on their projects I would be less optimistic, but night dive and digital eclipse are 2 devs with huge ROI. working with software that's 20+ years old will do that. Not that their jobs are "easy" but rather it's not costly.

And with tools like the Kex engine and Eclipse engine it's even less difficult than it would normally be. The only struggles port-studios normally face is steady work what with all the JP companies going with HAMSTER and M2 by default lately or just doing it in house. Only Japanese dev I can think of that still uses western porting studios is SNK (who arguably put Code Mystics on the map with their ports of SamSho, KoF 98/02, Last Blade, NGBC, and Fatal Fury). WB is content to let their arcade library rot, as is Activision with their 2600 games.

That's probably the main reason DE has shifted towards more focused and "artful" approaches to games with the Gold Master series and Atari 50.

 

When it comes to working with 90s closed source computer code on the other hand, Night Dive is basically all there is unless you just wanna release a shitty dos-box bundle. God knows 3D Realms tried with Kingpin Reloaded and that turned out "interesting". Hell, I'm certain that Blood: Fresh Supply has earned Atari more money than any other project they put out just from Steam and GOG sales alone. So they would be complete idiots not to keep them on board.

 

Basically, as a company that owns a huge library of 80s and 90s games but has no knowledge whatsoever as to rereleasing said titles, Atari acquired the two literal best studios possible. And I would hazard to guess the hope is that they supply a steady capital stream so Atari can use it to make some proper AAA titles. That's the impression I get looking at stuff like Food Fight, NeoSprint, and Lunar Lander vs the recharged series. Not to mention Night Dive is clearly capable of AAA quality work when given enough resources.

 

So TL;DR, I don't think the long term goal is to keep gobbling up studios, rather it's to get an actual internal workforce that's worth a damn so they can get some actual steady earnings for once. Especially when even shit as simple as the recharged games was outsourced. THAT'S how few internal developers they have: they can't even make clones of their own games without outside help. 

[zzip]

5 hours ago, Warboss Gegguz said:

This would be very cool if I knew anything about Accolade beyond giving us Bubsy.

Like, are their any other noteworthy IPs or...?

They were a fairly big deal in the late 80s early 90s.   Their popular IPs included the Hardball series,  Test Drive, Ace of Aces, Fight Night, 4th and Inches. Mean 18.

 

Problem was a lot of their output was sports games,  and even though they were highly regarded at the time,  those sports have since been done better by other developers.

[82-T/A]

On 12/21/2023 at 4:45 PM, PowerDubs said:

You may be underestimating who now works under the Atari corporate umbrella. 

 

 

So, tell me about this. I've been out of the "gaming scene" for a while. But I know that back in the 90s and 2000s... video game companies were actual large offices with multiple employees that did everything from writing the software, to publishing them, including manufacturing the boxes and CDs in house. In the early 2000s (like... literally just before 9/11), I worked for a software company that printed CDs, boxed them, and shipped them out. And this is largely how a lot of these companies were back then.

 

So I guess the question I have is... we're buying IP... and when we buy IP, we're not necessarily getting a company. For reference, I happened to have my original Test Drive manual when Accolade was developing the game... the address is 20813 Stevens Creek Blvd., Cupertino, CA 95014. Now it's a bunch of different offices that do all kinds of different things (one is cyber security, one does network stuff, etc.). So, they bought Accolade... they actually own the brand, but other than some legal documents, they didn't actually get anything other than IP. I assume this is different with Night Dive, and that other company we talked about in another thread.

 

But that's kind of my question here... Atari is buying up a lot of IP, which is fantastic... but are they acquiring programmers on the payroll with it too? I'd love to know how that works... because things are much different today than they were even just 10 years ago.

[GraffitiTavern]

23 minutes ago, 82-T/A said:

But that's kind of my question here... Atari is buying up a lot of IP, which is fantastic... but are they acquiring programmers on the payroll with it too? I'd love to know how that works... because things are much different today than they were even just 10 years ago.

Yes and no. Any group of devs attached to Accolade are long since gone, same with M Network and the Stern games. Those were just IP rights and brands that were held by licensing mills. But with the acquisition of Nightdive and Digital Eclipse, those are each functional studios which make their own games. So now they have two in-house dev studios, but none tied to the Bubsy/Accolade stuff.

[Warboss Gegguz]

1 hour ago, zzip said:

They were a fairly big deal in the late 80s early 90s.   Their popular IPs included the Hardball series,  Test Drive, Ace of Aces, Fight Night, 4th and Inches. Mean 18.

 

Problem was a lot of their output was sports games,  and even though they were highly regarded at the time,  those sports have since been done better by other developers.

I know they split off of Activision and they had bubsy. And yeah, I don't play sports game so idk.

Also, I thought infogrames owned the Test Drive series. Or was that a different Test Drive series?

[82-T/A]

51 minutes ago, GraffitiTavern said:

Yes and no. Any group of devs attached to Accolade are long since gone, same with M Network and the Stern games. Those were just IP rights and brands that were held by licensing mills. But with the acquisition of Nightdive and Digital Eclipse, those are each functional studios which make their own games. So now they have two in-house dev studios, but none tied to the Bubsy/Accolade stuff.

 

Well, I'm excited to see what Digital Eclipse and Night Dive end up doing under the name of Atari. While I really like the Atari name, one thing that always bugged me a little bit in the 80s and 90s when EA or Activision (or one of the others) would swallow up a smaller company, they'd strip off the name. I hope that whatever they make, there's room there for both Atari and Night Dive on the box... lol... listen to me, there's no more boxes. Sigh.

 

Anyway... I'm hoping if Atari reproduces anything from the Accolade brand, they include the Accolade logo... complete with the little dash that shoots across the middle.

 

[Lord Mushroom]

10 hours ago, Warboss Gegguz said:

I thought infogrames owned the Test Drive series. 

They sold it in 2016 to Bigben Interactive.

[Warboss Gegguz]

3 hours ago, Lord Mushroom said:

They sold it in 2016 to Bigben Interactive.

It genuinely feels like their choice of IPs to liquidate during their bankruptcy filings were possibly some of the worst IPs to sell. Especially since they didn't put Alone in the Dark up for grabs until 2018 when that's probably the most valuable IP they had at the time outside of maybe Rollercoaster Tycoon and their retro library. Like, I get that's how bankruptcy works, but they basically sold SUPER valuable Ips for dirt purely because THEY hadn't done anything with them in a while, rather than selling them based on their actual brand value.

"Well, TD:U 2 didn't do amazing, may as well sell the ENTIRE IP for a few mill." "Well, Battlezone on XBLA wasn't a perfect game, so let's just ditch one of the most famous Arcade IPs ever for less than a million dollars."

 

I mean, clearly they also think that if they've done everything they can to buy them back from the people they sold them to.

Edited December 23, 2023 by Warboss Gegguz
factual correction