Shiny Entertainment
Newport Beach, Calif.
949/610-0300
boss@shiny.com
www.shiny.com
Shiny Entertainment, a division of Atari, Inc., is a leading interactive video game developer and the creator of numerous award-winning titles for PC and video game consoles. Shiny's latest project is "Enter The Matrix™," based on the second installment in The Matrix film trilogy, "The Matrix Reloaded," from Warner Bros. Pictures, Village Roadshow Pictures and writers-directors Larry and Andy Wachowski.
Shiny Entertainment, founded in 1993, is based in Newport Beach, Calif.
New York-based Atari, Inc. (Nasdaq: ATAR) develops interactive games for all platforms and is one of the largest third-party publishers of interactive entertainment software in the U.S. The Company's 1,000+ titles include hard-core, genre-defining games such as Driver™, Enter the Matrix™, Neverwinter Nights™, Stuntman™, Test Drive®, Unreal® Tournament 2003, and Unreal® Championship; and mass-market and children's games such as Backyard Sports™, Nickelodeon's Blue's Clues™ and Dora the Explorer™, Civilization®, Dragon Ball Z® and RollerCoaster Tycoon®.
Atari, Inc. (www.atari.com) is a majority-owned subsidiary of France-based Infogrames Entertainment SA (Euronext 5257), the largest interactive games publisher in Europe. Infogrames/Atari is based in New York, while parent company Infogrames Entertainment is based in France.
Chronology
1993
Shiny Entertainment founded by David Perry.
Shiny Entertainment signs worldwide publishing deal with Playmates Interactive Entertainment.
April 25-May 2, 2002
Shiny Entertainment, a subsidiary of Interplay Entertainment Corporation/Titus Interactive, acquired by Infogrames for $47 million. The studio will continue to hold the "Matrix" franchise and the deal includes the license to produce three games based on the Matrix movies.
May 7, 2003
French-American video game publisher Infogrames changed its name to Atari in an effort to increase its profile with consumers by reaching back into gaming history. To mark the new Atari and the new ticker symbol "ATAR," Chief Executive Bruno Bonnell opened Nasdaq trading. "What we have decided to do, following a very precise strategy, effectively is to adopt this brand Atari," Bonnell said. "Clearly we feel like it is the symbol of the global company that we became during the last two years." Bonnell said the parent company trading on the French bourse will continue to be known as Infogrames Entertainment.
May 15, 2003
"Enter the Matrix," the hotly anticipated video game companion to the Warner Bros. film "The Matrix Reloaded," released in conjunction with the movie. Infogrames/Atari expects the game to be an international megahit, selling millions of units. Infogrames said it plans to ship 4 million units of the game across the various gaming systems to retailers worldwide. The success of the game is widely seen as the key to the company meeting its sales forecasts.
Atari
The Atari name is the most storied in video gaming, dating back to the early 1970s, when Nolan Bushnell and a team of engineers at Atari created "Pong," the arcade video game that was so popular machines sometimes jammed because they were overflowing with quarters.
Over the years, Atari went through many incarnations, and at one point operated as a subsidiary of what was then called Warner Communications and is now known as AOL Time Warner. Atari ceased to be a standalone company in 1996, when it was acquired by JTS. In early 1998, JTS sold the Atari rights and assets to toymaker Hasbro.
Infogrames, founded in France in 1983, acquired the rights to the Atari brand in early 2001 when it bought Hasbro Interactive. In October 2001 the company relaunched the brand and began using it as a games publishing label. Though its origins are French, Bonnell said 65 percent of the company's business is done in the United States.
In 2002, the company cut 60 percent of its French work force. Bonnell said he is dividing his time evenly between the two sides of the Atlantic.
Infogrames/Atari shares have been on a run of late, rising more than 130 percent on the Nasdaq since April 18, 2003, when the company said it had completed work on "Enter the Matrix."
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