Atari corporate history: from Atari, Inc. to Atari SA

Atari, Inc. was founded in California in 1972 and sold to Warner Communications in 1976 for about US$28 million. In July 1984 Warner split the company: Jack Tramiel’s new firm bought the home computer and console business together with the Atari trademark outside arcades and became Atari Corporation, while Warner kept the arcade division, which became Atari Games. Atari Corporation merged into the disk-drive maker JTS in 1996, and JTS sold the Atari assets to Hasbro Interactive in 1998 for US$5 million. Infogrames bought Hasbro Interactive in 2001, renamed its US arm Atari, Inc. in 2003 and took the name Atari SA itself in 2009. Atari SA’s July 2026 press release states that the Atari wordmark and logo are trademarks of Atari Interactive, Inc.

Who owned the Atari name, and when

Years	Company	Owner	What it did with the name
1972–1976	Atari, Inc.	Privately held by its founders and investors	Arcade games, then home Pong
1976–1984	Atari, Inc.	Warner Communications	Arcade games, the 2600 console, the 400 and 800 computers
1984–1996	Atari Corporation	Jack Tramiel and partners; listed on the stock market from November 1986	Home computers, consoles and the Atari trademark outside arcades
1984–1985	Atari Games, Inc., renamed Atari Holdings, Inc. in March 1985	Warner Communications	The arcade division until February 1985, and Ataritel
1985–1999	Atari Games Corporation	Namco and Warner, then Atari Games management and Time Warner from 1990, then WMS Industries from 1996	Arcade games, plus home games under the Tengen label; renamed Midway Games West in 1999
1996–1998	Atari Division of JTS Corporation	JTS	Atari software, trademarks and licenses
1998–2001	Atari Interactive, Inc.	Hasbro Interactive	Atari trademarks and game rights
2001–2026	Atari Interactive, Inc.	Infogrames Entertainment SA, renamed Atari SA in 2009	Owner of the trademark; licensed to Atari, Inc. in the United States from 2003

The founding years, from Computer Space to Pong and Kee Games, are covered on how Atari was founded.

Atari, Inc. under Warner Communications (1976–1984)

Warner signed the purchase contract on September 7, 1976. The New York Times put the total price at about US$28 million in cash and debentures, and reported Atari’s revenue for the fiscal year ended May 29, 1976 at about US$39 million, with net income of US$3.5 million. Michael Current’s timeline dates the completion to October 1, 1976, for about US$12 million in cash and US$16 million in debentures. That same month Atari opened its new headquarters at 1265 Borregas Avenue in Sunnyvale.

Under Warner, Atari launched the Atari 2600 console in 1977 and the Atari 400 and 800 computers in 1979. TIME, in February 1984, put annual sales at US$200 million in 1977 and US$2 billion in 1982.

How Nolan Bushnell left

On December 28, 1978, Bushnell lost the chairmanship and became a creative consultant to the coin-operated division. Joe Keenan became chairman, and Ray Kassar, who had run the consumer division since March, became president and CEO (Current, citing The Wall Street Journal of January 4 and The New York Times of January 5, 1979). Bushnell contested the change with Warner’s Manny Gerard on January 26, 1979, then left the company.

Bushnell’s own account, given to the Smithsonian in 2017, differs on the terms. He said Warner offered to keep him as chairman, with Kassar as CEO and Bushnell free to do creative work, and that he refused. Asked whether he quit or was fired, he answered: “yes, both at the same time simultaneously.”

Growth, then losses (1980–1983)

Business Week, in a June 1981 article reprinted on an archived Atari Historical Society page, put Atari’s 1980 revenue at US$425 million, mostly from video games. The same article cited an estimate that the computer division had lost about US$10 million in 1980 on sales of about US$10 million.

On December 8, 1982, Warner warned that fourth-quarter earnings would fall far below expectations because of a sudden slump at Atari (Current). The New York Times reported in January 1984 that Atari had earned US$323 million in 1982 and lost US$536 million in the first three quarters of 1983. For the full year, the Associated Press reported on July 2, 1984 that Atari lost US$538.6 million in 1983 on revenue of US$1.12 billion; Popular Computing Weekly gave the same figure as an operating loss. The New York Times (US$538 million) and TIME (US$539 million) rounded it, and UPI gave US$535 million.

Kassar resigned as chairman and chief executive in July 1983. Warner named James J. Morgan, a Philip Morris marketing executive, to succeed him from September 6, 1983 (The New York Times, July 8, 1983). The market collapse itself is covered on the video game crash page.

The July 1984 split

On July 2, 1984, Warner announced that it had sold Atari’s home computer and home video game business to Tramel Technology, Ltd., a company formed that May by Jack Tramiel, the former head of Commodore. According to UPI, Tramiel paid US$240 million in notes, and Tramiel and his partners had invested US$75 million in the new company. Warner expected a second-quarter loss of about US$425 million because of write-downs and Atari’s operating losses.

The sale gave Tramiel’s company the Atari trademark outside arcades and the underlying rights to Atari games created before June 30, 1984; the arcade rights to those games stayed with Warner’s coin-operated business (Current). Warner kept the coin-operated game business and the Ataritel telecommunications division (The New York Times, July 7, 1984). On July 11, 1984, the two companies took their new names:

• Tramel Technology became Atari Corp.
• Warner’s Atari, Inc. became Atari Games, Inc.

By August 1984, The New York Times reported, Tramiel had replaced all of Atari’s top management and reduced the payroll from about 1,200 to a little more than 300 people.

In February 1985 Warner moved the arcade division into AT Games Inc., a new company it formed with Namco, the Japanese arcade game maker. AT Games was renamed Atari Games Corporation on February 19, 1985, with the right to use the Atari Games trademark on coin-operated arcade games. Warner’s remaining shell, Atari Games, Inc., became Atari Holdings, Inc. on March 15, 1985 (Current). Warner vice president Geoffrey W. Holmes declined to disclose the terms, other than to say that Namco was buying “more than 50%” (Los Angeles Times, February 6, 1985).

Atari Corporation (1984–1996)

Atari Corporation started in the old Atari headquarters at 1265 Borregas Avenue. In December 1984 it decided to vacate and sell that building, and by March 1985 its principal office was at the smaller 1196 Borregas Avenue. In early 1996 it moved again, to offices at 455 South Mathilda Avenue in Sunnyvale (Current).

Its products included the Atari ST computers from 1985, the XE line of 8-bit computers, the Atari 7800 console, the Lynx handheld in 1989 and the Atari Jaguar console in 1993. Other dated events:

• November 7, 1986: initial public offering of 4.5 million shares (Current).
• 1987: a tender offer of US$6.25 a share, or US$67.3 million, for the Federated Group electronics store chain (Current).
• January 1989: Atari Corporation sued Nintendo for US$160 million, alleging that Nintendo had tied up game developers through exclusive licensing agreements. A jury found on May 1, 1992 that Atari had not been harmed, and the judge dismissed the rest of the case on May 14 (UPI, May 14, 1992).
• 1994: settlements of patent litigation. In the first quarter Atari received US$2.2 million from the settlement involving Atari Games and Nintendo, and Time Warner bought 1.5 million Atari shares for US$12.8 million. In the fourth quarter Sega paid US$50 million for a license to Atari patents issued from 1977 to 1984, which left Atari US$29.8 million after legal costs, and bought 4,705,883 new shares for US$40 million, about 7.4 percent of the company (Atari’s 1994 annual report; Sega’s filing of November 1994).

The merger with JTS (1996)

On February 13, 1996, Atari Corporation and JTS Corporation, a privately held disk-drive maker in San Jose founded by Jugi Tandon, agreed to merge. The New York Times valued the stock swap at about US$75 million and said Atari’s shareholders would own 60 percent of the new company, which would be led by JTS executives and take the JTS name.

The merger closed on July 30, 1996, with JTS as the surviving company. JTS issued about 63.85 million shares to Atari’s shareholders and then had 103.4 million shares outstanding (JTS’s report to the SEC), which works out to about 62 percent rather than the 60 percent announced. The former Atari Corporation became the Atari Division of JTS. Atari’s common stock was delisted from the American Stock Exchange after trading on July 30.

Atari Games Corporation (1985–2003)

Atari Games worked from Milpitas, at 675 Sycamore Drive from late 1985. Because Atari Corporation held the Atari name for home products, Atari Games set up the Tengen subsidiary on December 21, 1987 to publish its home console games (Current). The arcade side of the company is covered on the Atari arcade history page.

On June 6, 1990, Atari Games signed an agreement to buy back the shares held by Namco America (43.8 percent of Atari Games, according to Game Machine), in exchange for Atari Operations, which ran about 40 arcades, leaving Time Warner as the majority shareholder. In 1994 Atari Games, Tengen and Time Warner’s multimedia unit announced that they would operate under the common name Time Warner Interactive.

On March 29, 1996, WMS Industries of Chicago bought all the stock of Atari Games from Warner Communications through its Williams Interactive subsidiary. WMS’s report to the SEC estimated the price at US$23,852,000, of which US$2 million was paid in cash and the rest in notes. The Los Angeles Times, reporting the deal on March 8, 1996, said the price was not disclosed and that Atari Games employed 300 people in Milpitas.

WMS later placed Atari Games under its Midway Games subsidiary. On November 19, 1999, Atari Games Corporation was renamed Midway Games West Inc., and the Atari Games brand was dropped. In February 2003 Midway moved the Milpitas studio’s work to San Diego, affecting 116 employees (Current).

Midway Games went through bankruptcy, and in July 2009 Warner Bros. Entertainment bought most of its assets, including the Midway Games West library. The Los Angeles Times reported the court-approved price as US$33 million on July 2, 2009, then reported on July 18 that the final price was US$49 million, the extra US$16 million compensating Midway for its game inventory and accounts receivable.

JTS and Hasbro Interactive (1996–2000)

JTS sold its Atari Division on February 23, 1998, to HIAC XI Corp., a subsidiary of Hasbro Interactive. JTS’s report to the SEC gives a price of US$5 million in cash for assets consisting mainly of Atari home computer games and the intellectual property rights and licenses attached to them. The New York Times printed the same figure. The Los Angeles Times said Hasbro had acquired more than 75 Atari properties, including Centipede, Missile Command, Pong, Breakout and Tempest, and that the price was not disclosed.

HIAC XI was renamed Atari Interactive, Inc. on May 7, 1998. JTS filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on December 4, 1998, and the case was converted to a liquidation under Chapter 7 on January 29, 1999 (Current).

Infogrames, Atari Interactive and Atari SA (2000–2026)

Infogrames Entertainment SA, the French publisher based in Lyon, took control of GT Interactive Software in December 1999 and renamed it Infogrames, Inc. on May 10, 2000 (Current). On January 29, 2001 Infogrames completed its purchase of Hasbro Interactive, including the Atari assets, for US$100 million: US$95 million in Infogrames shares and US$5 million in cash (Infogrames press release; The New York Times, January 30, 2001).

In 2003 Infogrames moved its business to the Atari brand. The date of the renaming of its US subsidiary depends on the document:

• Current dates the renaming of Infogrames, Inc. to Atari, Inc. to April 30, 2003.
• The company’s report to the SEC, filed on May 8, 2003, gives May 6, 2003, with the new Nasdaq ticker ATAR.
• The announcement that the group would use the Atari brand worldwide is dated May 7, 2003 (Current).

At the same time, Atari Interactive, Inc. was merged into its parent, Infogrames Interactive, Inc. (the former Hasbro Interactive), which took the name Atari Interactive, Inc. That company kept ownership of the Atari trademark and of many games from Atari, Inc., Atari Corporation and Hasbro Interactive, and licensed the name to Atari, Inc. (Current).

Later events:

• October 8, 2008: Infogrames completed its purchase of the Atari, Inc. shares it did not already own, at US$1.68 a share, and Atari, Inc. became a wholly owned indirect subsidiary (report to the SEC).
• May 2009: Infogrames Entertainment reported that its board had decided to rename the company Atari (Game Developer, May 29, 2009). In January 2013 Atari, Inc. described its parent as “Atari S.A. (formerly Infogrames S.A.)” (PR Newswire).
• January 21, 2013: Atari, Inc., Atari Interactive, Humongous and California U.S. Holdings filed for Chapter 11 in New York, to separate from their French parent (PR Newswire). Reuters reported that Atari SA also sought court protection in Paris the same day. The plan of reorganization filed later in 2013 was sponsored by Atari SA (disclosure statement, case no. 13-10176).
• July 6, 2026: Atari SA became a Luxembourg société anonyme through a cross-border conversion. Its shares remain listed on Euronext Growth Paris under the ticker ALATA, and its July 7, 2026 press release states that the Atari wordmark and logo are trademarks of Atari Interactive, Inc.

Atari’s buildings in Sunnyvale and Milpitas

Atari began in 1,700 square feet of offices in Santa Clara (TIME, 2012), moved its headquarters to Los Gatos in 1973 and to Sunnyvale in October 1976. That month it occupied six buildings in the Moffett Park industrial park, including the headquarters at 1265 Borregas Avenue and the consumer division at 1195 Borregas Avenue (Current).

The coin-operated division moved to Milpitas in January 1982, at 790 Sycamore Drive, and its engineering staff moved into a new building at 1501 McCarthy Boulevard in 1983 (Current). In February 1983 a union trying to organize Atari’s plants put the number of assembly workers in Sunnyvale and Milpitas at 3,000 (Current). When Tramiel bought the company in 1984, TIME described Atari as spread over 49 buildings around Sunnyvale.

After the split, Atari Corporation stayed on Borregas Avenue until 1996. Atari Games moved from 1272 Borregas Avenue in Sunnyvale to 675 Sycamore Drive in Milpitas in late 1985, and its studio remained there until the move to San Diego in 2003.

Research outside games: Atari Corporate Research and Ataritel

Atari Corporate Research. Alan Kay, who had worked at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center, joined Atari in October 1981 as vice president for corporate research and chief scientist (Current, citing InfoWorld). Current’s timeline lists the labs that followed:

• the Atari Sunnyvale Research Laboratory at 1196 Borregas Avenue, founded in February 1982;
• the Atari Cambridge Research Laboratory, at Five Cambridge Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, near MIT, opened in July 1982.

On January 31, 1983 Atari announced that it had hired Ted Hoff from Intel as vice president of research and development for all three divisions (Current, citing The New York Times of February 1, 1983). Kay resigned in the spring of 1984 to join Apple (The New York Times, May 3, 1984). Current dates his departure to April 5, 1984, after layoffs in the research department that included the closing of the Cambridge lab.

Ataritel. In March 1982 Atari’s Advanced Technology Group became the Ataritel division, with Steve Bristow as vice president of engineering (Current). Atari announced the division on March 17, 1983. The New York Times reported the next day that Ataritel was headed by Peter Wensberg, a former Polaroid executive, and would sell products through telephone companies and electronics stores from early 1984. An archived Atari Historical Society page instead describes the project, code-named Falcon, as “headed up by Steve Bristow.” According to that page, Atari’s 1983 brochures promised a home network for voice communications, appliance control and security, with designs by Porsche Design and Morison Cousins Associates.

Warner kept Ataritel after the July 1984 split. In August 1984 it sold the visual telephone designs and prototypes to MEDAMA, Inc., a Mitsubishi Electric subsidiary in the United States, and shut the division down. Mitsubishi’s Luma Telecom shipped the telephone in 1986 as the Luma LU-1000 (Current).