Today the two companies are now a single, more streamlined publisher and developer working to strike a balance between creating new titles and resurrecting some of Atari’s classics.

Gone are some games, gone is the name Infogrames and gone too is Harrison as president of the company. Now the charismatic Englishman will serve as the non-executive Director of the Group. While Jeff Lapin, formerly of THQ, has joined the board as Chief Operating Officer.

“Phil’s had enormous impact and some of it has been painful for us to do,” said David Gardner, CEO and director of Atari. “We needed to get rid of projects that weren’t going to be viable, clean out the old IP portfolio and sign up new things.

“He’s made a huge difference to us, but on the other hand we are mainly going to be in the U.S. and we are simplifying the business and structure.”

Harrison is much happier to be on the board, Gardner said, adding that Harrison’s family recently had a baby.

Part of that streamlining meant dumping a number of older games and reexamining what would work best for the company, Gardner said.

“We did cancel a number of projects throughout the year,” he said “The company’s focus is going to be less on trying to build another giant packaged good company and more on putting out products with a longer subscription model and more web-centric games. Games that take advantage of Atari’s IP.”

Recently acquired developer Cryptic will be working on a new massively multiplayer online game based on an IP that Atari already owns.

“We don’t want to announce any products we are working on per say,” he said. “We have a very valuable catalog of IP that for a long time haven’t been exploited properly. Cryptic is very excited about developing them and are in the process of mocking up things and building prototypes so we can look at them and decide what to greenlight.”

The key to Atari’s success, though, will be in finding the right balance between new IP and reinvigorating classics.

“We are an IP owner,” said Jim Wilson, CEO of Atari. “As an IP owner it is contingent for us to develop our IP.”

Atari recently announced they wouldn’t be exhibiting at E3, leading some to ponder the company’s future line-up of games, past Ghostbusters and Champions Online.

Gardner said the decision was made because the games they have coming out don’t really need the support of a booth at the show. Atari will be making some announcements soon about future titles.

“The decision was not about the money as an overall comment, it was always about the efficiency,” Gardner said. “Atari doesn’t need to be the trend-setter at E3. I’m very comfortable with the decision we made.”

The most noticeable news coming out of Infogrames/Atari this morning was the decision to rename the company simply Atari, a decision that was easy to make but not as easy to implement, Gardner said.

“That’s something we have been planning for awhile,” Gardner said. “Things were messier than I liked when we arrived (at the company.) There was so much confusion about Atari and Infogrames, it was really impressive.

“Our goal was to get things massively streamlined over the year, which we have done.”

But, Gardner added, the brand will mean nothing without the product to support it and Atari is hard at work making sure it does.

“The Board agreed to change Infogrames Entertainment’s name to Atari,” the company announced today. “This decision will enable us to make the best use of the Atari brand, capitalizing on worldwide strong name recognition and affinity, which are keys drivers to implement the Company’s online, product and licensing strategies.”

In March 2008, France’s Infogrames bought out and took over Atari Inc.

During the previous fiscal year, the company only posted losses €51.1. However, the good news is that consolidated revenues were up 51 percent to €136.4 million in a sluggish global economy. US revenue growth was up 82.3 percent.

Infogrames attributed these losses to “discontinued operations due to the exit of its distribution business in Europe and Asia.” Instead, the company is focusing on a few selected big titles as well as migrating Infogrames online.

Atari’s yearly fiscal report has revealed that Cryptic “is working on the development of a series of new games based on Atari’s existing and historically successful IPs”. Existing and historically successful, hey?

Looks like my dreams of an ET MMO – based on the events of the game’s mass grave, not the motion picture – might be about to come true.

Might.

According to a statement made by Atari as part of the company’s fiscal year report:

Because of a shift of business operations to the US, Phil Harrison will move from the role of President to that of non-executive Director of the Group. As all Board members, he will continue to assist, support and guide the Company’s strategy.

He’s still sticking around, sure, but the whole “non-executive” thing makes his new job title sound awfully ceremonial.

Which is a shame for Atari, since Harrison is one of the most prominent and successful public faces a company can hope for in this business.

But it must be a bigger shame for Phil, since you only ever get one chance in a lifetime to have a business card that says “Directeur Général Délégué”.

We’ll contact Atari in the morning, and try to get a clearer idea of what this move means for both Atari and Harrison, along with who, exactly, will be replacing him (the company’s report does not specifically name a replacement).

At the Atari Live event in London, Bozek spoke about her involvement in setting up Atari London and the kind of social gaming she will be pursuing at the new studio now that she isn’t tied to the PS3.

“I’m working on something brand new,” said Bozek, “It’s still very much in the social, mass-market space, that’s the area that I’m very, very much interested in. And now cross-platform. Or potentially on any platform which could include PlayStation of course.”

Bozek eyeing social games on all formats [GamesIndustry.biz]

Atari’s former management team, Jim Wilson, Tim Flynn and Jeff Reese will stay on, among the few survivors of an Infogrames whack about a year ago. directing their efforts on rehabbing the brand in North America. Infogrames also gave a four-point strategy it ‘ll follow under a new “simplified global structure”

• Reduce general and administrative expenses, including costs related to being a US public company, and generate economies of scale
• Provide greater opportunities to develop the US distribution business and find new partnerships
• Strengthen the US online platform to develop online operations

Infogrames Completes Atari Inc Acquisition [GamesIndustry.biz]

This is a significant step in expanding Atari’s online game development capability. Paulina is one of the industry’s most respected creative leaders with an outstanding track-record of commercial and creative success and I’m delighted that she will bring her unique vision, consumer insight and proven ability for creating amazing entertainment experiences to Atari.

Hit the jump for the press release.

INFOGRAMES ANNOUNCES THE APPOINTMENT OF PAULINA BOZEK AS DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR OF NEW ONLINE GAME STUDIO

- Award-Winning Game Director Of $500 Million, 15 Million Unit-Selling SingStar® Franchise to Lead New Online Game Development Team at Atari, Based In London -

LONDON, UK – 8 September 2008 – Infogrames Entertainment, under its consumer brand Atari, today announces the formation of a new in-house game development studio under the creative and production leadership of Paulina Bozek, one of the games industry’s most pioneering and successful producers. At Atari, Paulina will apply her outstanding production and development skills to establish a new game development team and studio based in London. The new studio will focus on innovating and developing mass-market consumer games and services for online-enabled devices including Personal Computers and game consoles.

“This is a significant step in expanding Atari’s online game development capability,” said Phil Harrison, President of Infogrames. “Paulina is one of the industry’s most respected creative leaders with an outstanding track-record of commercial and creative success and I’m delighted that she will bring her unique vision, consumer insight and proven ability for creating amazing entertainment experiences to Atari.”

“I am very excited to be joining Atari at this pivotal time for both the company and the industry,” said Paulina Bozek. “There is a huge opportunity as gaming platforms become more ubiquitous, more connected and attract more mainstream audiences. Atari has a great vision for the future and I can’t wait to start realising that vision in new products and services.”

For the past 6 years Paulina has been Executive Producer and Game Director of the multi-award winning SingStar franchise on PlayStation®2 and PLAYSTATION®3 at Sony Computer Entertainment’s London Studio. SingStar has achieved combined sales of over 15 Million units and life-time revenue of approximately $500M (measured at retail and online worldwide). The most recent version of SingStar on PLAYSTATION 3 incorporates a variety of online innovations including integrated commerce, community and user-generated content services.

The new Atari studio will initially be located in Hammersmith, west London and will recruit industry-leading technical, creative and production resources, both as in-house employees and externally contracted resources.

About Paulina Bozek:

Paulina started her career in games in 1999 at Ubisoft in Montreal, Canada where she worked with a small team to launch and project manage GameLoft.com, Ubisoft’s then online portal of game services and communities. In 2003, she joined Sony’s London Studio and was appointed as the Producer of SingStar shortly afterwards, over-seeing the production and creative direction of the Franchise. Since its release, the SingStar Franchise has been instrumental in establishing games as popular entertainment for mainstream audiences.

Paulina is the recipient of several prestigious awards, including the first ever BAFTA Interactive New Talent Award in 2004. In 2007, she was listed in the Top 10 rising stars of the Media field on the ‘Courvoisier Future 500 List.’ And in 2008 Mangagement Today listed Paulina in its annual list of top ‘35 women under 35′ in British Business. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Cultural Studies and an MSc in Media & Communications from the London School of Economics.

About Infogrames Entertainment and Atari:
The Infogrames group, including the Atari brand, is a global producer, publisher and distributor of interactive entertainment software for all market segments and all interactive game platforms including consoles from Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony, advanced smartphones, Personal Computers, web and online. Its games are sold in more than 60 countries through an international distribution network and direct to consumers via www.atari.com.

Atari’s extensive catalogue of popular games is based on original franchises (Alone in the Dark, Test Drive, V-Rally, My Horse & Me, Backyard Sports franchise, Total Annihilation, Outcast etc.), publishing properties (The Witcher, Legendary, Race Pro etc.), international licenses (Dragon Ball Z, Dungeons & Dragons, Jamie Oliver etc.) and classic games covering the entire history of the video game industry (Pong, Missile Command, Asteroids etc).

Paulina Bozek leaves Sony to join Atari [VG247] [Pic]

“We rely on borrowings to meet our operating needs”, said Atari, now that it has no more substantially-valued IP to sell. Atari’s majority shareholder, Infogrames SA, will preserve Atari through an acquisition and a $US 20 million loan, while BlueBay High Yield Investments has also loaned Atari $US 14 million.

Atari also relies heavily on publishing revenues from a single franchise – Dragon Ball Z, which it says generated 49.1 percent of its net publishing revenues in fiscal 2008. Godzilla accounts for 9.2 percent.

Atari now primarily acts as a North American publisher-distributor for Infogrames-licenced titles. In kind, Atari has licenced its Test Driver and Test Driver Unlimited properties for seven years to Infogrames, and the language in the annual report suggests a tense relationship:

“During fiscal 2008, we completely terminated our product development activities and we granted IESA a seven year licence to exploit our last remaining valuable game franchise”, the company said. “Further, we increasingly focused our efforts on distributing products published by IESA. These steps substantially reduced our revenues”.

Atari also warns, when quantifying its risk factors, that Infogrames’ control over the company might be “disadvantageous” to its shareholders, although Atari also said it expects Infogrames to approve the pending merger.

“IESA [Infogrames Entertainment SA] controls us and could prevent a transaction favourable to our other stockholders”, Atari said. “IESA beneficially owns approximately 51% of our common stock, which gives it sufficient voting power to prevent any transaction that it finds unfavourable, including an acquisition, consolidation or sale of shares or assets that might be desirable to our other stockholders”.

“Additionally, IESA could unilaterally approve certain transactions as a result of its majority position. IESA also has sufficient voting power to elect all of the members of our Board of Directors”.