David Gardner, the CEO of Infogrames, told GamesIndustry.biz that he will be thinking about leaving the Infogrames name in favor of a switch to the Atari brand that everyone knows.
"I’d like to consider that, I think that would be the final mark of the transformation from Infogrames to Atari," said Gardner. "We have a new board of directors, a new management team that’s less than a year old – so yes, it’s really continuing.
"We like to think of Infogrames, instead of being the tired, old company, we like to think of it as the best-funded, best-branded, most energetic start-up in the history of computer gaming."
Phil Harrison, former head of SCEE, had this to say about the new direction of Infogrames, "[Gardner and I] had a very interesting series of dreams, of discussions, about if we were to create a company, what kind of company would it be, and what direction would it be headed in," he said. "We got quite a long way down that path, and then, out of leftfield, this opportunity came along.
"When we were evaluating it, we thought about what we would want from a successful company. You’d want people, products, you’d want revenue and cashflow. You’d want some infrastructure, some offices around the world, and it’d be great to have a brand that was a global brand.
"And I tell you, that was the hardest thing when I was trying to brainstorm this, when I was trying to come up with a brand that we could use worldwide – every time I came up with a new name for a games company, I’d Google it and find that somebody had already taken it.
"So when we were looking at what we’d need to create a successful company, and then we evaluated what Infogrames has, it ticked all the boxes."
