Tiny Diggers – An iPad Construction Truck Game for Kids Age 2-5

Shiny (known for developing Earthworm Jim and Enter The Matrix) has been sold off by Atari to Foundation 9 (currently developing Sonic Rivals and Dirty Harry).

Alas, poor Atari… so many bad decisions. I’m actually surprised Atari is still around as a viable company. They just can’t seem to get anything right. Which is too bad, because they are publishing Neverwinter Nights 2, which is arguably one of the best up-and-coming PC games. But don’t be surprised if they change their name from Atari to Interplay, stop paying their employees, and completely implode.

Implosions aside, I almost feel bad for Atari. However, all of the emotional capital gets thrown right out the window when their CEO says crap like this (quoted from gamesindustry.biz):

The sale of Shiny Entertainment completes the final phase of our strategic restructuring. We now have a centralised organisation that can utilise external studio execution while maintaining internal focus on creative development and production.

Okay, allow me to translate for the marketing-weasel-speak impaired. Atari has been hemorrhaging money and their stock price hasn’t been above $1 since 2005. To deal with imminent failure, Atari implement “strategic restructuring”, which is another way of saying “we fire people and sell stuff until we’re not losing money anymore.”

The next part is one of those idiotic statements that’s steeped in marketing crap so that they can say a lot without actually saying anything at all, which is also why Atari is a complete failure. They’re basically saying they’re going to outsource a lot, but still focus on internal development. Whatever. When you jackholes at Atari figure out how to speak like normal human beings and stop acting like corporate shills, then you’ll find that it’s a lot easier to make money. All this PR-speak just makes you look like an implosion.

And that’s why I hate Atari. They have so much potential, but they’ve pretty much squandered all of it because they’re ruled by their marketing department. (Which I have a little bit of experience with, previously working at a company that laid off 60% of its marketing people for this very reason.)

Good luck Atari. You’re gonna need it.