Atari acquires Intellivision

[Cmaier]

Atari Acquires Intellivision Brand

Purchase of Intellivision Trademarks and Games Unites Competing Brands from the '70s and '80s Atari® — one of the world's most iconic consumer brands and interactive entertainment producers — announced today it has purchased the Intellivision brand and certain games from Intellivision...

atari.com

When I was 10, this would have been huge news in Mrs. Stein’s homeroom.

 

[Altaic]

Atari Acquires Intellivision Brand

Purchase of Intellivision Trademarks and Games Unites Competing Brands from the '70s and '80s Atari® — one of the world's most iconic consumer brands and interactive entertainment producers — announced today it has purchased the Intellivision brand and certain games from Intellivision...

atari.com

When I was 10, this would have been huge news in Mrs. Stein’s homeroom.

I don’t know what to make of this… I guess retro games are back again? That’s cool.

 

[Citysnaps]

Whoa...I had forgotten about Atari (apparently now a French company). A blast from the past, and a pioneer in gaming, started by entrepreneur Nolan Bushnell who setup the company in Sunnyvale, CA.

 

[Eric]

It's like a battle of the late 70s all over again. This smacks like an April Fools joke.

 

[mr_roboto]

As many have probably guessed, the modern entity called Atari has little real continuity with the original Atari thanks to a bunch of M&A nonsense. When Atari's last console (the Jaguar) flopped, there was little hope of recovery. Jack Tramiel sold Atari's assets to JTS, a failing hard drive manufacturer which didn't care at all about games, they just wanted the shell of an existing public company to reverse merge with in order to get listed on stock markets without going through an IPO. JTS laid off more or less everyone, and later sold the Atari name and IP rights on to Hasbro.

In turn, the reason it's a French company now is that Infogrames, a French game publisher, bought the brand from Hasbro to sell some of its games under, and later decided to rename itself to Atari.

I'd give good odds that Intellivision is much the same, except it's probably been a famous name being used by other organizations even longer than Atari.

 

[Edd]

I had an Atari 2600, standard issue for 80s middle class households. I felt like richer kids had Intellivisions. They never made the same splash as the Ataris but then Colecovision came out and blew my mind with the Donkey Kong graphics. I had to go over to other kid’s houses to play that, as my father would be damned if he was going to buy another console.

 

[Cmaier]

As many have probably guessed, the modern entity called Atari has little real continuity with the original Atari thanks to a bunch of M&A nonsense. When Atari's last console (the Jaguar) flopped, there was little hope of recovery. Jack Tramiel sold Atari's assets to JTS, a failing hard drive manufacturer which didn't care at all about games, they just wanted the shell of an existing public company to reverse merge with in order to get listed on stock markets without going through an IPO. JTS laid off more or less everyone, and later sold the Atari name and IP rights on to Hasbro.

In turn, the reason it's a French company now is that Infogrames, a French game publisher, bought the brand from Hasbro to sell some of its games under, and later decided to rename itself to Atari.

I'd give good odds that Intellivision is much the same, except it's probably been a famous name being used by other organizations even longer than Atari.

The intellivision story is even crazier. There’s this thing called the amico, and I’ve probably watched 50 hours of YouTube videos about that scam.

 

[Yoused]

We know that Atari was around in 2019

(I failed to notice that Rutger Hauer died the same year as Roy Batty)

 

[KingOfPain]

We know that Atari was around in 2019

A lot of „future“ movies also reference PanAm…

I recalled that Atari belonged to Hasbro, but I apparently forgot that they sold the brand again.
As Mr_Robtoo noted, Atari is just a name now (based on an opening movie in Go, IIRC), and has nothing to do with the original company.

 

[Cmaier]

A lot of „future“ movies also reference PanAm…

I recalled that Atari belonged to Hasbro, but I apparently forgot that they sold the brand again.
As Mr_Robtoo noted, Atari is just a name now (based on an opening movie in Go, IIRC), and has nothing to do with the original company.

they’ve produced some interesting little retro consoles lately. also some crap. But there’s a little renaissance going on with them now among the retro gaming community.

 

[mr_roboto]

The intellivision story is even crazier. There’s this thing called the amico, and I’ve probably watched 50 hours of YouTube videos about that scam.

Oh, right! I learned about Amico by watching hbomberguy's video about the Roblox OOF sound, but had forgotten about it because it's only kind of a side-story to the main topic, and I didn't go looking for other Amico content.

(If you like rabbit hole videos I do recommend watching that one. Just be prepared, it's 2 hours long. The story goes places!)

 

[Cmaier]

Oh, right! I learned about Amico by watching hbomberguy's video about the Roblox OOF sound, but had forgotten about it because it's only kind of a side-story to the main topic, and I didn't go looking for other Amico content.

(If you like rabbit hole videos I do recommend watching that one. Just be prepared, it's 2 hours long. The story goes places!)

yeah that guy is quite a character.