Atari, Atari

In Japanese, atari is the nominalized form of ataru (verb), meaning "to hit the target" or "to receive something fortuitously". The word 'atari' is used in Japanese when a prediction comes true or when someone wins a lottery. The choice of Atari as a brand name was arguably better than Syzygy for most markets in terms of spelling, pronunciation and potential name recognition. Atari was incorporated in the state of California on June 27, 1972.

The result was the Atari 2600, sometimes called VCS for Video Computer System. Bushnell knew he had another potential hit on his hands, but bringing the machine to market would be extremely expensive. Looking for outside investors, in 1976 Bushnell sold Atari to Warner Communications for an estimated $28 $32 million, using part of the money to buy the Folgers Mansion. Nolan continued to have disagreements with Warner Management over the direction of the company, the discontinuing of the Pinball division and most importantly, he felt that the Atari 2600 should be discontinued, during a heated argument between Nolan Bushnell and Manny Gerard, Nolan was fired in December 1978.

Warner's stock price slid from $60 to $20, and the company began searching for a buyer for its troubled division.In 1983, Ray Kassar was forced to leave Atari over an insider stock trading sale, and executives involved in the Famicom lost track of the negotiations, and the deal eventually died. With Atari's further financial problems and the Famicom's runaway success in Japan after its July 16, 1983 release date, Nintendo decided to go it alone.

Tramiel emphasized computers over game consoles. At the time Atari like HP personal computers had their own operating systems which fell victim to Microsoft's success.

In July 1996, Atari merged with JTS Inc., a short-lived maker of hard disk drives, to form JTS Corp.

On May 7, 2003, Infogrames had its majority-owned, but discrete US subsidiary Infogrames NA officially renamed Atari, Inc. , renamed its European operations to Atari Europe but kept the original name of the main company Infogrames Entertainment. The original Atari holdings division purchased from Hasbro, Atari Interactive, was also made a separate corporate entity.

Source: Wikipedia > Atari