Gamedaily.biz writes: "In this exclusive, we talk with Atari North America's CEO Jim Wilson in his first interview since joining the company 5 months ago. With its first profitable quarter in years and an emphasis on building a strong distribution platform, Atari's turnaround appears to be underway.
GameDaily BIZ: Atari has really had a tough time. With credit troubles, a Nasdaq delisting, and continued losses, what's the approach now to get back on track?
Jim Wilson: There certainly was a time when Atari North America was struggling. Over the last year, a number of steps have been made with Atari Inc. and Infogrames to shore up the business, to simplify the way the companies work together, to get the companies to work more closely than they have in the past. Infogrames is a 51% owner of Atari Inc. and in many ways the companies should be and do work very well together. From a cash perspective, a number of things have been done in the last year, whether it's the credit line with Blue Bay investments or with Infogrames right around the time of our merger agreement, that have really helped stabilize the company from a cash flow standpoint. There has also been a focus on streamlining the company from a cost perspective. There were some initiatives in the fall to do that and we most recently focused on some initiatives that were happening in June."
Alone in the Dark developer Pieces Interactive has been hit with layoffs a month after its release, as per the latest information.
That genuinely, genuinely sucks. The reboot has clear flaws, but it really felt like a solid first step for this team to receive *greater* investment.
That's standard. Teams are together for a Project, after its done some..and sometimes most devs are fired until the next Project is in the works and people are needed again. Only the core members stay in the time between the hot phase of the game development.
What’s annoying is people don’t understand how contractors work, either. All of this is uninformed knee-jerk reactions without any understanding of how employment works in this industry. There are key developers and staff that stay with a studio/publisher, but often times it’s a hire per project and then seeking new employment for a project. That’s how it’s always been…
That's a fair point too. I would say that in light of its tepid critical/commercial response and ongoing mass layoffs across the industry I think it's understandable for fans to worry about the longer-term implications. We'll see how it plays out in the future.
VGChartz's Lee Mehr: "In one sense, it feels strange to even think Pieces Interactive had big shoes to fill with this series' legacy. Given what's come before, did it really? And yet, even when considering the last two flops over a two-decade span, there's still something about Alone in the Dark emblazoned on a title screen that carries a sense of revered history. In that respect, perhaps this reboot's best accomplishment is in honoring that spirit through its inventive world. It's also fair to emphasize knocks against its survival-horror design, some puzzle-solving, and so on; it certainly won't be considered a trendsetter like the 1992 classic. Still, the amount of goodwill wedded to its brighter qualities makes for something that dawdles the line between unfortunately-flawed and impressively-enticing."
The new Alone in the Dark remake doesn't do anything especially noteworthy, but that doesn't mean it's bad. It's just... cromulent.
