Atari Corporation

Atari Corporation was formed in 1984 when Jack Tramiel bought the home computing and game console divisions of Atari, Inc. from Warner Communications and merged it with his own company, Tramel Technology Ltd. (TTL).

Jack Tramiel was the former CEO of Commodore International which had been recently ousted. During this time, he stopped all of their game and console development and focused only on developing computers. Jack Tramiel hired many of the engineers from Commodore to join him, however these engineers were sued by Commodore for stealing computer designs that were used in Commodore computers, and Commodore won. Atari also sued Commodore and Amiga Corp. for breach of contract, which was eventually settled out of court.

Atari came up with the Atari ST computer, which stopped the net losses at Atari, the ST sold 4 million units, mostly in Europe, it did not fare as well in the USA.

This success gave Atari more financial leverage, so Atari got into marketing the handheld console, the Atari Lynx (which was developed by Epyx). The Lynx had very good technical abilities, however it drained the batteries required for it very quickly, and they had a shortage of parts when a person needed it repaired. It was also more expensive than the Nintendo Game Boy and had less aggressive marketing strategies that the Game Boy had and did not have the third party development that the Game Boy and the SEGA Game Gear had.

Atari then proceeded to develop a 64-bit CD Based console, the Atari Jaguar, which was expensive on the market. It did not fare well in the beginning of it's introduction, and after the SEGA Saturn, Sony PlayStation and Nintendo 64 came out, the Jaguar was a complete failure because of its inability to compete with these systems. The Tramiel family eventually pulled out of the business and sold their stock to JTS Inc., but Atari does not exist anymore.

The company and its intellectual properties were acquired by Hasbro Interactive on 13 March 1998. The Atari name was briefly used as a label for select games in 1999. After Infogrames acquired Hasbro Interactive in 2001, they first used the Atari brand for select titles in late 2002, then renamed the bulk of their subsidiaries to Atari on 6 May 2003. Their respective histories are separate.