Atari closures

[JeffVav]

They report that they'll either have broken even or lost $10 million after their costs are factored in.

 

These is BS though also - Alot of companies (like movie houses) tack on everything from salaries, marketing, private jets for executives stock market corrections, etc.. to make a gae appear to be unprofitible since some bonuses are tied to profit.

 

I think you're confusing project accounting with corporate accounting. They could attribute every expense in the entire company to their successful product in order to nullify its profit and avoid royalties and bonuses, but these costs are not fictitious, just misattributed. The company bottom line isn't going to be affected by which project these costs are attributed to.

 

So, break even to $10 million loss is not BS. It'd actually be against their interests to under-specify their earnings in their quarterly reports, since that affects investor confidence. However, if they were too slippery in how that number was reported (either under or over), people could land in jail.

 

The most creativity they can legitimately have in their corporate accounting, AFAIK, is to do delay expenses or profit from one quarter to the next, so they get more time to react before bad news becomes public.

[NovaXpress]

Another reason to cut the payroll is to make a company more attractive for a takeover. The majors like EA and Microsoft are buying up the competition and doing so for their trademarks, not their talent. Even a company doing as well as Activision is often mentioned as a takeover possibility, so it's very possible that Atari might change hands again down the road if their current direction doesn't please the investors.

[NovaXpress]

The next time Atari stock takes a dip, I think I'll have to pick some up. The more I think about it, the better an acquisition they'd be for one of the Big Four (after Sony, EA, Microsoft and Nintendo, everyone is small enough to be bought), probably at a nice markup once the takeover rumors actually start. Might be worth a little gamble.

[+davidcalgary29]

One of the primary reasons that Atari has has a succession of investors is that the name is still invested with much goodwill (a valuable commodity), and this has attracted a number of weak companies who have attempted to paper over the financial cracks in their own firms with borrowed reputation. Atari's bottom line will never change until it's acquired by a firm that has enough cash to capitalize on the company's strengths.

[Curt Vendel]

A while back I was assuming that U.S. Atari was "made" mostly out of Accolade: but you seem to be pretty sure now that it was actually Microprose?

 

I don't know who made up the Beverly building recently but it was originally the headquarters of Hasbro Interactive (and before that Parkers Brothers). After Hasbro bought Atari, the Atari division was based out of Beverly. I guess the same happened when Hasbro Interactive bought Microprose.

 

 

The building used to actually be owned by the Tonka Corporation, and a large "Tonka Joe" statue is even in the lobby.

 

 

Curt

[Curt Vendel]

I think they should hire Jeff Minter and some other wacky programmers to create more unique games. Games by this "Atari" easily get lost among all the others. If they want to be profitable, they need to take chances and stop playing it safe with all these terrible licence games (Can you say The Matrix?) If they would stick to the old motto, "Easy to learn, difficult to master" they'd do a lot better.

 

Jaguar was ultimately a failure, but people even outside the Atari realm still remember Tempest 2000.

 

Yes, because Jeff Minter's Nuon games did such a great job helping to keep Nuon afloat

 

 

 

 

Curt

[Bryan]

I have a friend who worked for EA, and said it was terrible. They don't pay that much, and they expect you to live at your desk around the clock (think Office Space). This is okay with the fresh-out-of-college types who can't believe they got a job at a game company, but he got tired of the 60-80 hour weeks it took to keep the projects on schedule.

 

-Bry

[Gregory DG]

Yes, because Jeff Minter's Nuon games did such a great job helping to keep Nuon afloat

There just weren't enough of them! One man can't do it all! But his stuff is always the most talked about, that's for sure.

[Curt Vendel]

I know dude, I'm just busting chops, I own a Toshiba player with Nuon in it, I love the damned thing. I was even impressed with Best Buy had a Nuon Kiosk in their store, but then literally like 2 weeks later the best layoff and closure announcement was made :-(

 

 

 

Curt