|
In 1993
Atari
Corp finally returned to the home video game console market with its advancement
64 bit multimedia entertainment system called the Atari Jaguar 64. This
system featured high resolution graphics, superb stereo sound and DSP expansion
capabilities which made it the perfect platform for a whole new generation of
video games and accessories. However, Atari Corp's short lived
re-entry back into the market would not last long, with Sega's Saturn and Sony's
Playstation consoles looming on the horizon and Jaguar 64 sales not meeting
expectations the plug was
pulled on both the Jaguar 64 and Atari Corp itself in 1996 when Atari allowed
itself to be reverse merged with JTS Corp, a hard disk manufacture startup
from the famous Dr. Jugi Tandon. The company was
hungry for a fresh injection of fast cash and an easy route to becoming a
company with publicly traded stock. ATC ceased to exist on the stock exchange
and JTS took its place. Unfortunately manufacturing defect
rates were too high and Compaq cancelled a do or die contract with JTS and the stock then proceeded to nose dive from $3-4 per
share to .65 cents per share (one time as low as .12 cents) and had held around
that number until the company went bankrupt.
JTS management then liquidated the remaining stock of Jaguar 64's and related
products and ceased support to the Jaguar 64 line. Due to the shadow of an SEC investigation for not
maintaining Atari's business as specified in the reverse merger agreement, JTS
quickly sold the Atari division.
On March 3, 1998 JTS sold its Atari division to Hasbro Interactive for $5
million and Hasbro began to sell retro-game versions of Atari's most popular
titles for the PC and Playstation markets. Hasbro only pursued
software releases of Atari titles and no plans of utilizing any of Atari proprietary hardware designs for any new
console or handheld games ever came about. Hasbro Interactive
was purchased among other US companies by Infogrames, a well known European game
company. All of the US companies were pulled together an became
Atari, Inc. In 2004 Atari would make its first return into the
console market with the Flashback-1 console, other consoles are on the horizon
including Flashback 2.0, a 100% 2600 VCS compatible game console.
Today's
Atari is owned by a small group of 5 French Investors who have been licensing
the Atari name and have taken $3million of crowdfunding to attempt to put out a
linux box in a modern piece of plastic called the Atari VCS. |
