Atari's re-focus on retro
Atari has been considered a retro brand for decades now, but it hasn't always leaned into that designation. While licensed T-shirts and plug-and-play consoles have been a fairly consistent offering, the company's growth plans focused less on its own games and more on branching out to wearables, movies, gambling, blockchain, and hotels.
That changed a couple years ago with the arrival of new CEO Wade Rosen. Since Rosen's appointment, Atari has continued trying to grow the business, but with acquisitions and investments that mostly had a very clear retro angle.
It acquired Digital Eclipse, developer of the Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration collection, maybe the best-reviewed game with the Atari name attached since the company left the hardware business in the '90s.
It acquired Nightdive Studios, which built its name remastering older games for release on modern hardware, titles like Rise of the Triad: Ludicrous Edition, System Shock: Enhanced Edition, and Blood: Fresh Supply, which Atari published.
It invested Antstream Arcade, the retro subscription service that lets users stream a library of more than 1400 games from over a dozen platforms, including three Atari systems.
It also invested in Polymega, a modular retro console that lets users dump their old games and discs from a variety of classic systems and play them all on modern TVs with a slick user interface and quality of life features. When it invested in the company, it also announced an Atari module that would allow users to play and save Atari 2600 and Atari 7800 to the system.
Finally, it acquired a pair of websites in Atari Age and MobyGames. The former is a long-running and well-established community of Atari superfans, while the latter is the
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