Seriously, is it safe to claim Phil Harrison is a witch yet? I can think of no other way he could have possibly made Atari so much better in the short time he's been there. First he gets Atari a couple of big games that lost their publishers, and now he goes and gets Cryptic Studios! I'm starting to think Ready 2 Rumble was sacrificed in order for this and all of the other good things to happen...
Apparently, the resurging company has bought Cryptic for an upfront payment of $26.7 million, with a possible $20 million in performance-based bonuses. The US MMO developer most known for City of Heroes and City of Villains (which made over 100 million USD for their publisher, NCSoft) has three MMOs slated for future release which will now bear the Atari logo: Champions Online in 2009, Star Trek in 2010, and a secret mystery game for 2011.
If Champions Online and Star Trek Online can reach set revenue targets during 2010-11, Atari will pay an additional $20 million bonus as part of the agreement. No word yet on what those targets are, but my guess is we won't find out until they're actually reached (or not reached).
From near bankruptcy to several highly anticipated titles and one of the only legit MMO developers in the biz in less than a year? Time to see if Phil floats.
December 10th, 2008 at 12:48 am
Your picture is of the City of Heroes splashscreen, which was purchased by NCSoft from Cryptic Studios last year. NCSoft was the publisher of CoH and took over CoH franchise and took the whole development team minus Jack Emmert, who stayed with Cryptic and announced Champions Online after Marvel Universe Online got canned.