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.

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).

That disagreement, which reportedly infuriated Sony president Norio Ohga, let to a transition in power. Edge explores the birth of the console that would ultimately change the landscape of the industry, with Sony chinking away at the armour of then-dominant consoles from Sega and Nintendo with its PlayStation. As a companion piece to the magazine’s historical piece on the “Fall of Nintendo,” it’s a fascinating follow-up.

Not only do readers get a peek at preliminary PlayStation logos and the evolution of the console’s controllers, we get a chance to see the old Sony guard, when Phil Harrison had hair and Ken Kutaragi had a real job.

The Making Of: PlayStation [Edge-Online]

With the PS2 now in its last days, we can safely look back and say that, yes, God of War II was the machine’s swansong. But it could have been oh so different!

In an interview with 1UP, God of War II man Cory Barlog reveals that, upon first showing the game off to Sony bigwigs Shuhei Yoshida and Phil Harrison, it was met with a mixed reaction. Sure, it looked great, but the first thing Harrison – now with Atari – said was:

Very good, thank you. I just have to ask this, since it seems like the obvious question. Why are we not doing this on PS3?

Because the PS2 needed one last great game, silly!

Looking Back at God of War 2 [1UP]

Phil Harrison, the game industry’s gentlest, most sharply-dressed giant, worked at Sony for 15 years. Then he left. While he ended up joining Atari, turns out the original plan was to start his own company.

Speaking with Edge, Harrison says:

This isn’t new information,‭ ‬but our original plan was to start our own company.‭ ‬It was while studying that process that David [Gardner, CEO of Atari's parent company, Infogrames] met the asset management company that owned the majority‭ ‬share holding of Infogrames.‭ ‬So we decided to take our blank-sheet-of-paper vision and apply it to Atari.

Not new information for you, Phil, but it is to us! Shame on you for depriving the world of a company bearing your name. Or face. Or a stylistic impression of your chewing gum.

Well, not much with N3: Ninety-Nine Nights II, apparently! According to the upcoming issue of Famitsu, Tetsuya Mizuguchi (, Lumines) isn’t that involved in the game.