Tag Archives: david gardner

Former Atari and Sony head Phil Harrison has invested in a Finnish developed browser based co-op RPG called Gunshine.

More »

Atari’s announced its founder Nolan Bushnell has rejoined the company on its board of directors.

More »

We weren’t there – Mrs Pat’s the most pregnant woman in the world – but now we can all see Phil Harrison and David Gardner deliver the Atari Live keynote from London this week right here.

There’s a video of the entire thing, kicking off with a showreel of upcoming product and Gardner telling the crowd he and Phil have come back to the business for the love of the Atari brand. Brings a tear to the eye.

Watch it. These guys are two of the best in the trade. There’s the announcement of the new Mizuguchi products, the announcement of picking up Ready 2 Rumble and Demigod, the Ghostbusters date and all the rest of it.

Speaking to Edge at Atari Live in London this week, company boss Phil Harrison has predicted that the upcoming generation will never use a disc. For anything.

“There’s a generation of kids being born today and probably already alive who I’m pretty confident will never buy a physical media product,” he said.

“They will never buy a DVD, they will never buy a CD, and they will never buy a game in a box.”

Harrison’s boss, David Gardner, has already said that 90 percent of Atari’s products will be online “within five years”.

Talking at yesterday’s Atari Live event in London, Atari CEO David Gardner explained that secondhand sales have been damaging for the gaming industry.

“Secondhand game sales represent consumer choice and desire,” he said. “Obviously, it has economically been extremely painful for the industry… the publishers don’t benefit.

“But as games change and they become more and more network centric, the disc in the box becomes only one part of the experience. As that experience grows then it becomes not such a problem,” he added.

President Phil Harrison reckons that more online content will be an effective combatant of the secondhand trade: “”There’s no doubt that second hand games sales has a macro-economic impact on the industry and a lot of people get miserable about it,” he said.

“But it’s no coincidence that the most valuable games, the one’s that have the most lifetime as a game experience, are the one’s that don’t get resold, that don’t get traded.

“The games that have the embedded community, the embedded commerce, the extended, expandable experiences, are the one’s that you would never want to trade, the one’s you want to keep hold of. And that’s perfectly in line with our future strategy so we’re not that concerned about it,” he added.

Thanks, GI.

By Mike Bowden

Our ears are so close to the ground they’re all mossy. Highly placed sources told VG247 today that the real reason for Phil Harrison’s departure from Sony was that work is now starting on PS4 and deja vu was setting in.

“He could see he was about to get involved in another PlayStation cycle, and obviously wanted something new,” we were told. “The same thing was happening again and he’d been through it enough times to want to move on.”

The timing of Harrison’s decision to leave Sony confused many, given that PS3 was finally starting to bloom after a troubled seedling period. The PlayStation front-man announced he was to quit in February, giving no reason for the move.

He immediately joined Infogrames as president, saying he was finding the company’s focus on casual gaming and an increased influence on internet business models “very exciting”.

Bet PS4 doesn’t have two HDMI ports either.

As expected, Infogrames has bought Atari in a transaction costing $11 million.

Atari is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Infogrames. The deal is expected to close out in the third quarter.

“Bringing Atari US and Infogrames businesses together will enable us to create a simplified global structure for our business as we seek to re-build a well-managed, cohesive and financially disciplined company,” said CEO David Gardner.

“This is a key strategic event for Infogrames that will benefit all of our shareholders. I believe that this transaction will generate significant benefits for the Group.”

Infogrames boss David Gardner has told GamesIndustry.biz that the name “Infrogrames” may be ditched in favour of “Atari”.

“I’d like to consider that, I think that would be the final mark of the transformation from Infogrames to Atari,” he said. “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.”

Plenty more through the link, including quotes from everyone’s favourite games warrior, Phil Harrison.

According to this Reuters report, new Infogrames boss David Gardner has very high hopes for Alone in the Dark, releasing this June.

“Over the life of the product in this business year across platforms we are expecting between 2 and 3 million units,” he said.

Gardner also said that his priority now he’s taken over as CEO is to get the company back to break-even. Like, dur.

“We want to stop losing money,” he said. “This management’s team number one goal is to get a business plan together that gets us to a break-even level.”

Infogrames has offered to buy the remaining Atari stock for $1.68 per share. The French firm already owns 51 percent of the ailing game-maker.

Atari signed a new distribution deal with parent Infogrames last December, to last for the next three years. We assume the mov to take complete control of the brand is all part of Gardner and Harrison’s future-forging antics.

Yep, you can watch it. It’s almost like being there. Phil’s looking nice in his shirt and jumper, and David Gardner’s sporting a black polo neck. This was shot in New York earlier this week ahead of an Alone in the Dark press presentation.

Phil Harrison’s given his first speech as president of Infogrames in New York, ahead of a press presentation of Alone in the Dark.

Explaining why he quit his former role as head of PlayStation development, he pointed to “the things that excited me the most, the things that turned me on as a gamer, and as a business person, and as a creative person were the future of our industry, the connected community experiences – all the things we’re starting to see emerge that are really exciting players around the world.

“And those are the things I started thinking about in terms of creating a company or getting involved with a company to really shape and direct a business towards that future.”

Full thing through the link.

Here. A very worthwhile GI piece that tells you everything you need to know about what future-creating BFFs Phil and David have to look back on as history in the Atari brand. Any article that begins, “The original Atari Inc was founded in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney as an arcade engineering firm, dealing in pinball machines and the primordial arcade videogame market,” has to be worth a read.

Not a future, but the future. Following news late last night that Phil Harrison is to join Infogrames as president, CEO David Gardner has got all excited about the new Atari.

“In terms of European leaders in the games development industry, I’ve always wanted to work with Phil,” he said. “He’s going to partner with me to build the future. He’ll be the most senior guy responsible for all the content and network-centric material, all the investments that we make in games.”

In effect, then, Phil Harrison is the future. We knew there was something about him.

Following last night’s revelation that Phil Harrison has now been appointed president of Infogrames, CEO David Gardner has been quick to dispel any conception that the company and its game-specific subsidiary Atari are in any way on thin ice.

“We have a lot more cash than start-up companies do,” he said. “So I view ourselves as a well-branded, well-financed start-up. That’s the position we’d rather be in than a poorly funded, disappointed, broken down old company.”

As reported late yesterday evening, Harrison is now the software head of the French firm, following a highly public departure from a 15-year career at SCEE last week. Expect to hear plenty more on the topic throughout the day.

According to this, new boss David Gardner has said online gaming is key to Atari’s rebirth.

“The business and the industry is moving online on a global basis,” he said. “It’s moving at different speeds in different countries, but it’s pretty clear to me that the whole way that people are going to want to buy their games, play their games, interface with their games is network-centric. That’s where we need to get a lot smarter, a lot quicker, and use this famous brand.”

Gardner, formally of EA, also outlined some of his vision for Atari’s new brand of online gaming and content delivery.

“For me, the future is in creating very high quality games that are using technology with games playing on a server, not worrying about configurations and all those performance issues,” he said. “All that stuff should be seamless like a phone service – you pick up the phone and you get a dial tone and that’s it. You should be able to go to the computer and get some game time.”

A source close to Atari, speaking under conditions of strict anonymity, has told us that an announcement from the publisher’s top brass is expected on Monday morning.

Word has also reached us that new Atari boss David Gardner and Phil “you’re not SCEEing any more” Harrison are are on the same flight to New York on Monday.

Whatever could it mean?

Recently appointed Infogrames CEO David Gardner has admitted that the American arm of Atari has had serious problems in the past, but has now started the process of regeneration.

“It’s true it has lost plenty of money,” he said, speaking of the US Atari operation. “We don’t directly control the US because they have their own board of directors and management, and from a business point of view, it hasn’t always proven to be ideal.”

He added: “We can’t just take the decisions we want to take and we have to respect what the team says. They have to sort out that problem, we can’t sort it for them. They’ve got a new board and a chief re-structuring officer and they’re looking for a new CEO as well. It’s moving in the right direction.”

Gardner moved to Infogrames from EA, where he’d spent 25 years.

Brest press release ever. Newly appointed Infogrames CEO David Gardner, previously of EA, has now arrived in Lyon for some meetings. If that’s the best you can come up with, Atari, God help you all. Full thing after the link.

More »

According to this, David Gardner, formally an EA mega-boss, is now the CEO of Infogrames, Atari’s parent company. Gardner left EA last year after 25 years with the company to move to Europe and live with his family, according to that report.