Atari sales down 65 per cent
But online revenues way up.
Atari has announced that it is seeing much greater revenues thanks to subscription money brought in by massively multiplayer games, but it still reported a 65 per cent year on year decline in sales for its fiscal first quarter.
Apparently this is "in line with expectations", however, and "primarily timing-related". Last year's Q1 saw the release of Ghostbusters and Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena, and this year's sole release was Sandlot Sluggers.
That accounted for net revenue of just €19.3 million compared to €54.5 million in the same three-month period ended 30th June last year.
Of that €19.3 million net revenue, €8.4 million came courtesy of subscriptions to Champions Online and Star Trek Online, compared to €2 million from online activities last year.
Atari was bullish about expectations for the rest of the year, pointing out that Test Drive Unlimited 2 will launch on 24th September, along with Haunted House and Backyard Sport: Rookie Rush in September and October respectively.
The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings is due out for PC in spring 2011 as well, and we're also told to expect "a series of retail, XBLA, PSN and PC download releases based upon Atari's classic video game brands in the second half of the year", along with "numerous casual and social online game releases based upon Atari's classic video game brands in the fiscal year".
Atari, SA consists of New York-based Atari Interactive and Atari Inc, TDU2 studio Eden Games, MMO factory Cryptic Studios and Atari London Studio. The group used to go by the name Infogrames Entertainment.