Atari CEO Wade Rosen has been speaking to Game Developer about his company's recent revival of the Infogrames brand and says that he wants it to become a "preservationist" publisher that can work with old IP and bring it up to date.
Rather than signing up new games to publish under the Infogrames label, Rosen wants to see it become a home to older titles with a proven track record:
Infogrames is pretty unique in that we had a lot of opportunities coming to us of games or IPs that people wanted to sell because they felt like they shouldn't just disappear. We felt like Infogrames was the right place to have those series and carry them on. So, for Infogrames it's really about games that developers and publishers have moved on from–that probably still have some life in them.
[We're really interested in] IPs that have been out for a long time, that people have moved on from. The people who want to focus on their future projects and want to raise capital to make new games and focus on those–that's really what Infogrames is looking for.
Why we don't typically look at unreleased projects is I don't think we're more qualified to do that than anyone else. I don't think we have a competitive advantage. I don't think we're the best in the world at it. Best in class at it. So, really, why would we do it?
One franchise Rosen would dearly like to work on is Quest's Ogre Battle / Tactics Ogre series, which began life on the SNES back in 1993.
The current owner of the IP, Square Enix, recently remastered Tactics Ogre on modern-day systems, but Rosen is nonetheless keen to work on the series in some capacity:
I loved Ogre Battle. I know Tactics Ogre, they just put out the remaster, which is basically a port of the PSP game. But love that world. I would love to see us to something with Ogre Battle at some point. Tactics Ogre is pretty well covered. Even if it's not an acquisition–if Square is reading this please let us remaster Ogre Battle.
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