'Atari' to support PSP, DS

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Atari Playing Both Sides Of Handheld Wars
By David Smith
5/6/2004

While announcing a dip in revenue for the company's recently-concluded
fiscal year, Atari CEO Bruno Bonnell today announced that the publisher will
be an out-front player in the upcoming handheld wars. At a conference call
following Atari's release of financial results for the fiscal year ending
March 31, Bonnell promised several launch titles for Sony's PSP at the
beginning of next year, as well as support for Nintendo's upcoming DS
handheld.
Bonnell didn't mention any specific games for either platform, although
Atari was also included in Nintendo's recent announcement of publishers with
game projects in the works for the DS. Those projects will be among some 45
games Atari plans to release in the coming fiscal year, compared to 75 SKUs
in the just-concluded year.

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The promise of significant support for both fledgling handhelds in their
early days comes after a comparatively down year for Atari. Despite moving
more than five million copies of Enter the Matrix across all platforms and
some 400,000 copies of Unreal Tournament 2004 for the PC, Atari still
managed to make less money in fiscal 2004 than in the preceding year.

The publisher lost 17.3 million dollars in the fourth quarter on revenues of
$66.4 million (compared to $84.7 million in the same quarter last year), and
barely broke even for the year as a whole, pulling in net income of only
$766,000 on revenues of $468.9 million (compared to $534.2 million in the
preceding fiscal year).

Atari attributed the drop in revenues to its "lighter slate of titles" in
the 2003 holiday season, as well as its decision to delay DRIV3R out of the
fiscal year and into June.

Bonnell was rather cryptic regarding Atari's plans for future exploitation
of the Matrix property. He noted that the publisher still has a license to
produce two more games based on the Wachowski brothers' film franchise, and
stated that production of those games is "ongoing" (presumably at Enter the
Matrix developer Shiny), but he had nothing specific to say beyond that.

Until today, speculation surrounding Atari's one remaining title for E3
centered on the prospect of another console Matrix title, but those rumors
were denied by the announcement of Marc Ecko's Getting Up. Atari's E3
display will be a fairly low-key affair, featuring only that game and the
near-complete DRIV3R.

If nothing else, then, we'll have a chance to work out exactly what Getting
Up might be next week. Look forward to a full report on that project, as
well as anything else we can dig up around Atari's display.


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