Atari

Atari, Inc. NASDAQ: ATAR is a majority owned subsidiary of Infogrames Entertainment SA (IESA), encompassing its North American operations. more...

Atari develops, publishes and distributes games for all major video game consoles, as well as for the personal computer, and is currently one of the largest third-party publishers of video games in the United States.

The company that currently bears the Atari name was founded in 1993 under the name GT Interactive. GT Interactive was acquired by IESA in 1999 and renamed Infogrames, Inc. Infogrames acquired the Atari brand name from its purchase of Hasbro Interactive, which in turn had acquired it from JTS Corporation, which the original Atari had merged with in 1996. Infogrames, Inc. intermittently used the Atari name as a brand name for selected titles before IESA official changed the subsidiary's name to Atari, Inc. in 2003.

The original Atari was a pioneer in arcade games, home video game consoles, and personal computers, and its dominance in those areas made it the major force in the computer entertainment industry in the early to mid-1980s. The brand has also been used at various times by Atari Games, a separate company split off in 1984.

The name of the three-pronged Atari logo is "Fuji".

History

Since the early days of coin operated machines, Atari has been responsible for home consoles such as the Atari 2600 (VCS); produced a series of eight-bit computers (Atari 400 & 800); taken part in the 16 bit computer revolution with the Atari ST; made the revolutionary (for its time) 64-bit Atari Jaguar; and released a hand held video game console, the Atari Lynx.

The 1970s: The rise of a video game empire

Founded in the United States in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney, Atari could be credited with starting the video arcade industry with the seminal PONG. The home version of PONG, which connected to a television set, was one of the first video game consoles.

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