Atari buys Atariage

[famicommander]

Atari didn't have to purchase the site to support the site.
They have all control now,period.
BB

So? The site had grown beyond Al's ability to manage alone and he was considering shutting it down entirely, shutting down just the store and database and keeping the forum up, selling it to an unrelated third party and washing his hands, or selling it to Atari and keeping things going as usual. He chose the latter.

Atari bought Nightdive Studios and hasn't interfered with them at all. They bought MobyGames and it also remains unchanged. Why would Atariage be different?

 

[sirlynxalot]

I figure Atari is going to use a light touch with the forum, at least in the near term while Al is still involved. It feels kind of weird for a company to buy a fan community. All the people in the atariage qa thread who are asking about guarantees and provisions to allow the site to go it's own way if atari seeks to modify it are foolish. If atari owns it, they control it and the buck will always stop with atari. They can do whatever the heck they want with it, fire Al, delete any criticism on the forums, delete the forums and it's 20 years of threads, etc.

On the other hand, it could be cool for genuine atari fans to more closely influence the products atari comes out with, and it seems like Al was almost ready to throw in the towel on the site, so in that case, getting some more years and financial support to keep the community site running is better than having it go away or be extensively paired back

 

[butthurt coconut]

Perhaps if Atari owns Atariage, they’ll be more in touch with with what fans really want to see from the modern-day company. In an ideal world at least. I wish Atari the best. I always thought it would be cool if Atari tried to be mainstream again, even if it takes years to get there again... Gotta play the long game. The Atari brand has been on the brink of death several times, been traded around a ton, yet it seems to refuse to die completely. One has to respect Atari for that at least. The VCS 800 may not be a smash hit, but at least it actually released—unlike what was initially seen as its main competitor, the Inty Amico. I wonder if the VCS venture has been profitable at all?

 

[famicommander]

More stuff like Atari 50 and all the Recharged games.

No more shit ass AtGames Flashback devices or MyArcades.

 

[jro]

So? The site had grown beyond Al's ability to manage alone and he was considering shutting it down entirely, shutting down just the store and database and keeping the forum up, selling it to an unrelated third party and washing his hands, or selling it to Atari and keeping things going as usual. He chose the latter.

Atari bought Nightdive Studios and hasn't interfered with them at all. They bought MobyGames and it also remains unchanged. Why would Atariage be different?

Lone dude was not doing great with the license, fucked up enough of my orders that I started avoiding him.

Hope Atari will do be better.

 

[NeoSneth]

People still care about Atari?

 

[sirlynxalot]

People still care about Atari?

Tbh atariage is probably the largest and most active video game forum I know where people are still regularly talking about old games.

 

[sirlynxalot]

Btw, wtf ever happened with this initiative to have atari branded hotels https://atarihotels.com/

 

[Fygee]

Haven't heard a single peep about it here in Vegas, and if there's anywhere I would expect to. it's here.

Themed hotels are a dead end in this day and age anyways. The ones we still have in Vegas have been mostly "de-themed", and there hasn't been one constructed and opened since the 90s excluding the Hard Rock (now Virgin). The new Hard Rock replacing the Mirage may change that, but we'll see.

 

[LoneSage]

This also made me think of neo-geo.com and how snk deciding to purchase it would probably kill it

Oh lil noob, but SNK did have their own forums. The SNK Playmore USA Forums, about nineteen years ago on this very day.

It was little more than SNK USA making polls about what the fans want, bottom tier goob threads like favorite Slug or Mai VS Shermie, discussion about KOF Maximum Impact, and eventually entertaining but sad, desperate threads by user @Alba Meira, who was definitely on the spectrum and wanted a job at SNK. Certainly there was a kind of optimism for the future of SNK, a hope for good games or more ports, at least.

Looks like KagerouSama also posted there: https://neo-geo.com/forums/index.ph...-tokyo-game-show-matches.119895/#post-1648631

Otherwise that forum is long gone. Now it remains only in my memory. For I am the Keeper of the Canon.

 

[FAT$TACKS]

It will be interesting to see what happens on the forums when Atari releases something that the fans think is total shit, and if they will be allowed to say as much on the forums under the new ownership.

 

[famicommander]

It will be interesting to see what happens on the forums when Atari releases something that the fans think is total shit, and if they will be allowed to say as much on the forums under the new ownership.

The fans (including myself) have been shitting on the Atari 2600+ and the MyArcade Pocket shit they're about to release relentlessly.

There are at least three corporate Atari employees (besides Albert) on Atariage and they're actively soliciting criticism right now. They're claiming they care about enthusiasts and can handle the vitriol that comes along with that. So far nobody has been silenced. Not even the people who are still bitching that the previous Atari regime sued Jeff Minter; they're still mad about it even though Jeff Minter himself worked with Atari to release a new game this previous February.

It's entirely possible that Atari turns heel and fucks everything up down the line but so far they're at least saying all the right things. And they haven't fucked with any of their previous acquisitions at all yet (MobyGames, Night Dive Studios).

 

[famicommander]

Not sure if WB would ever be interested in selling but getting back all the stuff from the Atari Inc/Corp/Games split in the 80s would go a long way towards building goodwill with the fans.

Atari SA has most of the classic Atari franchises but WB Interactive has all the Atari arcade stuff from 1984 onwards (Gauntlet, APB, Paperboy, San Francisco Rush, Klax, Hydra, Stun Runner, Cyberball, Blasteroids, Xybots, Marble Madness, Vindicators, California Games, Rampart, etc).

 

[Tron]

It has recently made the news that modern day Atari has purchased and will ultimately control the Atari website and forums, Atariage, which is probably the largest concentration of atari fans in one place on the Internet.

Atari acquires AtariAge

Atari today announced that it has agreed to acquire the Atari-focused community and news site AtariAge. The site will c…

www.gamesindustry.biz

Is it a smart move for a company hoping to cash in on nostalgia for its brand, to literally buy the website that contains it's largest community of fans? Or is that due to spectacularly backfire?

This also made me think of neo-geo.com and how snk deciding to purchase it would probably kill it

This would explain why the atari store was having a clearance sale for all it's license based 2600 homebrews of champ games.I wanted to buy a copy of wizard of wor but i missed out since i have didn't have the money.

 

[Takumaji]

For what it's worth, the clearance sale started before there was talk of a takeover.

I think the main motivation for buying Atariage is getting expertise in classic gaming from a group of people who know their stuff when it comes to Atari games and consoles. Many of them have experienced them first-hand when they were new and lived through the aftermath of the crash of '83 up to the 2000s when Atari as a company was handed from one owner to the other but nothing good came from them anymore.

Things could only get better after the x-games-in-a-stick and Flashback phase, the Atari 50 release has shown that it's possible to present gaming history in an attractive way that caters to both old fans and younger folks interested in classic gaming and they want to keep up that momentum.

Of course the fact that "retro" is at an all-time high also helps a lot.

I wish them a good hand in their endeavours and hope to see a proper new Atari console again, even though it seems next to impossible to establish a fourth console in the market. Who knows, tho, perhaps the time is right.