The Atari of old has been long gone while now, with their modern incarnation chasing business plans such as hotel chains and block chains. Both of those are sticking around, it sounds, but on the game development side they’ll be moving from free-to-play mobile games (including such reheated classics as RollerCoaster Tycoon Story and Atari Combat: Tank Fury) to paid-for games on PC and consoles. Recently-appointed CEO Wade J. Rosen has this to say about their plans for the future: Atari did recently restructure, splitting into gaming and blockchain divisions in April. Rosen was named CEO at that time, and announced that the gaming division would be shifting to console and PC releases. Today’s announcement specifically adds the “premium” element. It also mentions areas Atari will be moving out of in order to “efficiently allocate its resources to the success of this new strategy”. Five free-to-play games are being discontinued or sold (sorry, RC Tycoon Story). Atari are also stepping out of direct operations for their Atari Casino in Africa and will focus on licensing instead of production where TV shows are concerned. On what kind of premium stuff we can expect in the future, Atari say that their plan is to “leverage its catalog of 200 proprietary games to build a strong pipeline of premium games on all platforms.” Back in April, they also mentioned that new releases would be “introducing a meaningful single-player campaign, couch co-op/multiplayer, and online play,” to their classic games. They’ve said that the first releases of games in development are planned to launch in their financial year 2021/2022. Ta, GamesIndustry.biz.
