How Atari is leveraging 50 years of nostalgia | Wade Rosen interview

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Wade Rosen wants Atari to come back as one of the most valuable gaming brands. After all, there aren’t many 50-year-old game companies.

Last year, the company started marking its anniversary with a collection of classic games, and it will likely have more as the original Atari 2600 console games all start turning 50. On top of that, the company has been making games and doing licensing deals to get the brand in front of new audiences.

For a small company with just 30 people, that’s a lot of work, Rosen said in an interview at the Dice Summit. Rosen took over as CEO in April 2021, after previous CEO Fred Chesnais moved on after taking Atarin into the mobile games market and blockchain. The company recently announced the launch of a new and improved MobyGames website, built from the ground up.

Atari also partnered with Utomik to publish games like RollerCoaster Tycoon 2: Triple Thrill Pack, Pong Quest, and Asteroids: Recharged on the cloud gaming service.

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And Atari handled the global launch of Jeff Minter’s frenzied tube shooter game Akka Arrh on the PC and consoles. Minter is a legendary arcade game designer who gave us classics like Tempest.

Here’s an edited transcript of our interview.

GamesBeat: It seems like a big year. You have Atari’s 50th anniversary. When did all the celebration start?

Wade Rosen: It started at the beginning of last year, but the challenge was that when I came on board, we didn’t have a tremendous amount