Atari unloading Cryptic Studios

[gojira]

Gamespot is reporting that Atari will divest itself of game maker Cryptic Studios.

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6314183.html

Atari revealed the planned divestiture in its full-year financial report, with Cryptic's impact on the bottom line filed under the "discontinued operations" section of Atari's report. For the fiscal year ended March 31, 2011, Atari reported that Cryptic lost a total of €5.3 million ($7.5 million). That was an improvement over the prior year, when Cryptic launched both Star Trek Online and Champions Online, and Atari had the studio down as losing €12.6 million ($17.8 million).

[Certified]

I wonder what the chance of Hero Games picking up Cryptic is.

[Starcloud]

Minimal. Atari is going to want tens of millions for Cryptic.
Cryptic is the only part of Atari's operations that is making any money at all. Turbine would be interested in Cryptic for its D&D game, and it might settle their disagreement with Atari. And Champions Online is still making money thanks to the microtransaction model.

Honestly, it makes me think the people who bought the Atari name and have been running it into the ground just DO NOT know how to run a business, much less a game publisher.

[Tasha]

Hero Games/DOJ would be foolish to place their money in Cryptic. They should wait and buy back the Champions IP when it goes up at firesale prices.

[AmadanNaBriona]

Hero Games/DOJ would be foolish to place their money in Cryptic. They should wait and buy back the Champions IP when it goes up at firesale prices.

Yeah, this

[RexMundi]

Hero Games/DOJ would be foolish to place their money in Cryptic. They should wait and buy back the Champions IP when it goes up at firesale prices.

Thirded......will save the Cryptic hate for later, heh....

~Rex

[gojira]

Cryptic is the only part of Atari's operations that is making any money at all.

According to that bit I quoted, Cryptic is losing money. Is there something there that I'm missing?

[RexMundi]

I think in the MMO production world, only being in the hole in the single digit millions, is making money in comparisson to being in the hole double digit millions..... So I suppose it should be something like, Cryptic isn't losing as much money as what they USED to be.....

~Rex

[Pattern Ghost]

Honestly, it makes me think the people who bought the Atari name and have been running it into the ground just DO NOT know how to run a business, much less a game publisher.

Atari did that with the Jaguar debacle way back in '93. They didn't have a name to run into the ground by the time the current owners got it. No harm, no foul.

[Starcloud]

Cryptic did generate an operating budget profit. THe majority of the startup costs for Champions has been paid already. While there's some continuing costs, the microtransaction model is starting to pay off for Cryptic.

[Pattern Ghost]

I think in the MMO production world, only being in the hole in the single digit millions, is making money in comparisson to being in the hole double digit millions..... So I suppose it should be something like, Cryptic isn't losing as much money as what they USED to be.....

~Rex

MMOs don't really need WoW-type numbers to be very profitable. They just have to not suck, and the makers need to understand that a bad launch -- which has become standard in the genre -- will kill their subs. Cryptic shot themselves in the foot the same way Warhammer did: Over ambitious goals not met at launch, with a crap game engine driving the whole mess. Both games are better now, but gamers tend not to be big on second chances when a company doesn't meet its pre-launch hype/promises. (WoW seems to be an exception, as they didn't meet two of their major design goals at launch, but aside from getting screwed by Oracle, the launch was very smooth for an MMO, and they didn't leave out nearly as much as, say, WAR did.)

[RexMundi]

MMOs don't really need WoW-type numbers to be very profitable. They just have to not suck, and the makers need to understand that a bad launch -- which has become standard in the genre -- will kill their subs. Cryptic shot themselves in the foot the same way Warhammer did: Over ambitious goals not met at launch, with a crap game engine driving the whole mess. Both games are better now, but gamers tend not to be big on second chances when a company doesn't meet its pre-launch hype/promises. (WoW seems to be an exception, as they didn't meet two of their major design goals at launch, but aside from getting screwed by Oracle, the launch was very smooth for an MMO, and they didn't leave out nearly as much as, say, WAR did.)

Agreed......I'm not defending Cryptic at all, what I was saying though it seems to be a common thing in the computer game industry, to say one is doing well just because one did not suck as much as they did the previous quarter, even though the number in question is still in the negative of millions.....

WOW, seems to make it's way on the addiction factor....hence it can trip and stumble here and there because where are the WOW people going to go?

I wished nothing but the best for Cryptic when the CO thing was going to roll out, crossed my fingers, prayed that it wouldn't be COH all over again, but like you said, terrible engine, crappy launch. *shrug* Microtransaction thing brought me back to it for awhile but then performance issues and lag stuff started to annoy me again (especially when it's the high end machine getting all the lag, while every other game works just fine)....

Games better.....cept for the Lag issues which i will track down eventually since who knows where they are coming from, micro transaction thing is the way to go obviously, and so far the folks chugging along with the champs and trek stuff seem to say all is good as far as those games..... So remains to be seen.

The chopping block action though, doesn't surprise me with the numbers that can be googled up. Like you said Cryptic shot themselves in the foot and with COH behind them, they shoulda known better.

~Rex

[Starcloud]

There is more to the story than just "Atari says Cryptic lost tons of money." In a more detailed article, Cryptic's turned a small profit. All those heavy losses are coming from startup costs for the MMOs. Those costs are now past. Atari, however, seems to have decided "To heck with making games to sell in stores, we're going to go with markets that have practically no development cost at all and hope it makes us a ton of money."

The other problem, though, and it's a big one: Steam is no longer selling CO on their store. Then again, that might be because the client is available for free.

[lapsedgamer]

For my part, I don't like MMOs on the whole, so this is no loss to me. I hope this doesn't mean anything bad for DOJ. Hopefully, all the money has already changed hands and DOJ won't end up some sort of creditor.

I would eventually like to see all of the MMO stuff ripped out of the printed CU. I know it may prove me to be a grognard, but a lot of that stuff I just didn't like as much as the traditional interpretation. I just strip most of it out in my mind now when reading the books. For example, I hate the concept of Shadow Destroyer, but I use his stats for another mystic villain who is aligned with DEMON, so I don't feel like I wasted my money.

[gojira]

In a more detailed article, Cryptic's turned a small profit.

Linkage?

All those heavy losses are coming from startup costs for the MMOs.

This makes more sense. Atari might be amortizing its start-up costs against some internal yield rate, and coming up with a loss. They're right, if that's what they're doing, it's a loss for them. If the studio is profitable, there's a chance that they could recoup some money faster by selling it off. I guess that might be what is happening.