Atari is feeling pretty pleased about the "retro-focused strategy" it embarked on a while back, citing successes such as Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Rita's Rewind, The Thing: Remastered, RollerCoaster Tycoon Classic and the Atari 7800+ as examples of why it has paid off so handsomely.
"In 2023, Atari committed to a strategic decision to refocus the game and hardware lines of business on the company’s core strength in classic gaming," said the company in a press release issued today.
"The 2023 acquisitions of game development studios Digital Eclipse and Nightdive Studios significantly deepened the company’s expertise in bringing retro games from the 1970s through the early 2000s to modern PCs and consoles and expanded the company’s skill and reputation for acquiring the rights to and developing content around some of the world’s most beloved IPs."
Atari cites Nightdive and Digital Eclipse's releases—which include Star Wars: Dark Forces Remaster, System Shock, Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story and Tetris Forever—as further evidence of its commercial and critical success during the past year.
Wade Rosen, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, had this to say:
It was critical that Atari execute against our retro-focused strategy in 2024, and I am extremely pleased with the company’s performance across all of our business lines. Ending the year with such a strong reception to our fourth-quarter game releases —Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Rita's Rewind and The Thing: Remastered, as well as the Nintendo Switch release of RollerCoaster Tycoon Classic — gives me confidence that our strategy will lead to even more success in the coming year.
Speaking to Time Extension at the start of 2024, Rosen claimed he wanted to create the sense of "underpromising and overdelivering" at the firm. Based on the company's comments, his approach appears to have paid off.