Atari Corporation was an American manufacturer of
home computers
Home computers were a class of microcomputers that entered the market in 1977 and became common during the 1980s. They were marketed to consumers as affordable and accessible computers that, for the first time, were intended for the use of a s ...
and
video game consoles. It was founded by
Jack Tramiel
Jack Tramiel (, ); born Idek Trzmiel (; December 13, 1928 – April 8, 2012) was a Polish- American businessman and Holocaust survivor, best known for founding Commodore International. The Commodore PET, VIC-20, and Commodore 64 are som ...
on May 17, 1984, as Tramel Technology, Ltd., but then took on the
Atari
Atari () is a brand name that has been owned by several entities since its inception in 1972. It is currently owned by French holding company Atari SA (formerly Infogrames) and its focus is on "video games, consumer hardware, licensing and bl ...
name less than two months later when
Warner Communications
Warner Media, LLC (doing business as WarnerMedia) was an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate owned by AT&T. It was headquartered at the 30 Hudson Yards complex in New York City.
It was established as Time Warner ...
sold the home gaming and computing assets of
Atari, Inc. to Tramiel.
Its chief products were the
Atari ST
Atari ST is a line of personal computers from Atari Corporation and the successor to the company's Atari 8-bit computers, 8-bit computers. The initial model, the Atari 520ST, had limited release in April–June 1985, and was widely available i ...
,
Atari XE,
Atari 7800,
Atari Lynx
The Atari Lynx is a Fourth generation of video game consoles, fourth-generation handheld game console, hand-held game console released by Atari Corporation in September 1989 in North America and 1990 in Europe and Japan. It was the first handhe ...
and
Atari Jaguar
The Atari Jaguar is a home video game console developed by Atari Corporation and released in North America in November 1993. It is in the fifth generation of video game consoles, and it competed with Fourth generation of video game consoles, fo ...
; in addition to hardware, the company also published video games for its home systems and also had an in-house development team for Lynx and Jaguar software for
porting
In software engineering, porting is the process of adapting software for the purpose of achieving some form of execution in a computing environment that is different from the one that a given program (meant for such execution) was originally desig ...
, or developing original titles such as
''Warbirds'' and ''
Trevor McFur in the Crescent Galaxy''. In 1996, the company
reverse merged with
JTS Corp.,
becoming a small ''
de facto'' non-operating division which itself closed after JTS sold all Atari assets to
Hasbro Interactive in 1998.
History
The company was founded by
Commodore International
Commodore International Corporation was a home computer and electronics manufacturer with its head office in The Bahamas and its executive office in the United States founded in 1976 by Jack Tramiel and Irving Gould. It was the successor compan ...
's founder Jack Tramiel soon after his resignation from Commodore in January 1984. Initially named Tramel Technology, Ltd. (TTL), the company's goal was to design and sell a next-generation home computer. On July 1, 1984, TTL bought the Consumer Division assets of Atari, Inc. from Warner, and TTL was renamed Atari Corporation.
Warner sold the division in exchange for $240 million in stock in the new company.

Under Tramiel's ownership, Atari used the remaining stock of game console inventory to keep the company afloat while they finished the development of their 16-bit computer system, the
Atari ST
Atari ST is a line of personal computers from Atari Corporation and the successor to the company's Atari 8-bit computers, 8-bit computers. The initial model, the Atari 520ST, had limited release in April–June 1985, and was widely available i ...
. In 1985, they released their update to the 8-bit computer line—the Atari XE series—as well as the 16-bit
Atari ST
Atari ST is a line of personal computers from Atari Corporation and the successor to the company's Atari 8-bit computers, 8-bit computers. The initial model, the Atari 520ST, had limited release in April–June 1985, and was widely available i ...
line. Then in 1986, Atari Corp. launched two consoles designed when Atari was under Warner's control: Atari 2600 Jr and
Atari 7800 (which had a limited release in 1984). Atari Corp. rebounded, producing a $25 million profit for 1986.
The Atari ST line proved very successful (mostly in Europe, not the U.S.
), ultimately selling more than 5 million units. Its built-in
MIDI
Musical Instrument Digital Interface (; MIDI) is an American-Japanese technical standard that describes a communication protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, ...
ports made it especially popular among musicians. Still, after initially outselling the
Amiga
Amiga is a family of personal computers produced by Commodore International, Commodore from 1985 until the company's bankruptcy in 1994, with production by others afterward. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16-b ...
line, its closest competitor in the marketplace, the Amiga outsold it 3 to 2 in the end.

Atari eventually released a line of inexpensive
IBM PC compatible
An IBM PC compatible is any personal computer that is hardware- and software-compatible with the IBM Personal Computer (IBM PC) and its subsequent models. Like the original IBM PC, an IBM PC–compatible computer uses an x86-based central p ...
s, announcing a budget model at "a record-breaking price of under $599" in early 1987,
to be followed by a more expandable PC-2 model at a higher price point,
this being announced alongside the PC-3 in November 1987.
Responding to the introduction of the low-cost
Amstrad PC1512 in the UK, price points for the initial PC model were given as around £400 including VAT for a 512 KB floppy-only model supporting CGA, EGA and Hercules graphics, rising to £1000 including VAT for a hard drive model.
Later, the company introduced an MS-DOS compatible palm computer called the
Atari Portfolio.
Atari, under Tramiel, had a poor reputation in the marketplace. In 1986 a columnist for Atari magazine ''
ANALOG Computing'' warned that company executives seemed to emulate Tramiel's penny-pinching'
ndhard-nosed bargaining, sometimes at the risk of everything else," resulting in poor customer service and documentation, and product release dates that were "perhaps not the entire truth ... Pretty soon, you don't believe anything they say." He concluded, "I think Atari Corp. had better start considering how they're perceived by the non-Atari-using public."
The company, however, was much more open to the press than its predecessor Atari Inc., which had refused to let ''
Antic'' preview forthcoming announcements and even opposed the magazine printing the word "Atari" on its issues.
On August 23, 1987, Atari agreed to purchase the
Federated Group for $67.3 million. October 4, 1987, Atari completed the acquisition and gained full control of its own retail stores. In the final quarter of 1987, Federated lost $6.4 million in day-to-day operations. A post-acquisition audit ended on February 15, 1988, and identified $43 million in adjustments to Federated's balance sheet, far more than Atari anticipated. The net worth of its acquisition was reduced by $33 million. Atari's CFO later claimed that they would never have done the deal had they known at the time. Federated's operational losses increased, reaching $67 million for its first full year under Atari in 1988.
The FBI began an investigation of Atari in May of that same year for an ongoing scheme involving the profitable import and resale of Japanese DRAM chips in the US, "in violation of U.S. import laws and contrary to import agreements." This alleged DRAM scheme was purportedly to offset the unanticipated losses in the purchase of Federated. In March 1989, Atari announced that it would treat Federated as a discontinued operation and took an additional one-time charge of $57 million. Federated was eventually sold to
Silo
A silo () is a structure for storing Bulk material handling, bulk materials.
Silos are commonly used for bulk storage of grain, coal, cement, carbon black, woodchips, food products and sawdust. Three types of silos are in widespread use toda ...
in 1989.
In 1988, Stewart Alsop II said that Atari was among several companies that "have already been knocked out" of the GUI market by
Apple
An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...
,
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...
/
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...
, and others,
but Atari's sales hit their peak that year, at $452 million.

In 1989, Atari released the
Lynx
A lynx ( ; : lynx or lynxes) is any of the four wikt:extant, extant species (the Canada lynx, Iberian lynx, Eurasian lynx and the bobcat) within the medium-sized wild Felidae, cat genus ''Lynx''. The name originated in Middle Engl ...
, a handheld console with color graphics, to critical acclaim. However, a shortage of parts kept the system from being released nationwide for the 1989 Christmas season; the Lynx lost market share to
Nintendo
is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational video game company headquartered in Kyoto. It develops, publishes, and releases both video games and video game consoles.
The history of Nintendo began when craftsman Fusajiro Yamauchi ...
's
Game Boy
The is a handheld game console developed by Nintendo, launched in the Japanese home market on April 21, 1989, followed by North America later that year and other territories from 1990 onwards. Following the success of the Game & Watch single-ga ...
, which had only a monochrome display, but a much better battery life, and was widely available.
As the fortunes of Atari's computers faded, video games again became the company's main focus. In 1993, Atari released its last console, the
Jaguar
The jaguar (''Panthera onca'') is a large felidae, cat species and the only extant taxon, living member of the genus ''Panthera'' that is native to the Americas. With a body length of up to and a weight of up to , it is the biggest cat spe ...
.
One of the first entries in the
fifth generation of game consoles, the Jaguar was marketed as the world's first
64-bit
In computer architecture, 64-bit integers, memory addresses, or other data units are those that are 64 bits wide. Also, 64-bit central processing units (CPU) and arithmetic logic units (ALU) are those that are based on processor registers, a ...
console. However, due to a games library which was low in both quantity and quality, as well as being extremely difficult to program games for the system because of its multi-chip architecture, it was unable to compete effectively against
the incumbent fourth generation consoles; the
Sega Saturn
The is a home video game console developed by Sega and released on November 22, 1994, in Japan, May 11, 1995, in North America, and July 8, 1995, in Europe. Part of the fifth generation of video game consoles, it is the successor to the succes ...
and
Sony PlayStation would outsell the Jaguar in very large numbers late in its lifespan.
Atari sustained a net loss of $49.6 million for 1995, with $27.7 million in losses during the last quarter of the year alone.
Decline and aftermath

In December 1995, Sam Tramiel suffered a mild heart attack, forcing him to step down as Atari's president, causing Jack Tramiel to come back and lead the company again. On January 2, 1996, at the Winter
Consumer Electronics Show
CES (; formerly an initialism for Consumer Electronics Show) is an annual trade show organized by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA). Held in January at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Winchester, Nevada, United States, the event typi ...
, Atari Corporation formally announced the formation of a PC division, Atari Interactive, to "address the worldwide PC market". Planning to initially launch with four titles, ''
Tempest 2000
is a 1994 tube shooter video game originally developed by Llamasoft and published by Atari Corporation for the Atari Jaguar. Part of Atari Corp.'s ''2000'' series, it is a Video game remake, remake of the 1981 arcade game ''Tempest (video game) ...
'',
[Tempest 2000 CD cover at Moby Games](_blank)
/ref> '' Highlander: The Last of the MacLeods'', '' Baldies'', and '' FlipOut!'', further releases would include '' Missile Command 3D'', ''Return to Crystal Castles'', '' Rocky Interactive Horror Show'', and ''Virtual War''. These plans did not materialize.
Despite the Jaguar being a commercial failure, by February 1996, a series of successful lawsuits followed by profitable investments left Atari with millions of dollars in its bank account but no new products to sell at all. In addition, the Tramiel family wanted out of the business. On February 13, 1996, Atari agreed to merge with JTS Inc., a short-lived maker of hard disk drives, in a reverse takeover
A reverse takeover (RTO), reverse merger, or reverse IPO is the acquisition of a public company by a private company so that the private company can bypass the lengthy and complex process of going public. Sometimes, conversely, the public compa ...
to form JTS Corporation. The reverse merger was completed on July 30, 1996. Financially, the merge consisted of Atari's "acquisition" of JTS for approximately $112.3 million. Atari's role in the new company largely became a holder for most of its properties. Most of Atari's staff members were either dismissed or resigned, and its Atari Interactive division was quickly shut down, with the remainder of its employees being relocated to JTS's headquarters. Consequently, the Atari name almost vanished from the consumer market.
On March 13, 1998, JTS Corporation sold the Atari name and assets to Hasbro Interactive for $5 million, less than a fifth of what Warner Communications had paid 22 years earlier. The transaction primarily involved the brand
A brand is a name, term, design, symbol or any other feature that distinguishes one seller's goods or service from those of other sellers. Brands are used in business, marketing, and advertising for recognition and, importantly, to create and ...
and intellectual property
Intellectual property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect. There are many types of intellectual property, and some countries recognize more than others. The best-known types are patents, co ...
rights, which Hasbro Interactive largely used as a brand name for retro game releases.
On January 29, 2001, Hasbro Interactive was sold to Infogrames, which renamed it Infogrames Interactive and then the Atari Interactive name in 2003. The present day Atari Interactive
Hasbro Interactive, Inc. (Currently named Atari Interactive, Inc.) is the former video game subsidiary of board game and toy manufacturer Hasbro. Originally formed in 1995 and headquartered in Beverly, Massachusetts, Hasbro Interactive initially ...
, through Atari SA, continues to hold and license all Atari trademarks as well as produce many new games, some based on Atari's original properties, to this day.
List of products
* Atari ST
Atari ST is a line of personal computers from Atari Corporation and the successor to the company's Atari 8-bit computers, 8-bit computers. The initial model, the Atari 520ST, had limited release in April–June 1985, and was widely available i ...
(1985)
** Atari STacy (1989)
** Atari Transputer Workstation (1989)
** Atari TT030
The Atari TT030, more commonly known as the Atari TT, is a member of the Atari ST family, released in 1990. It was originally intended to be a high-end Unix workstation, but Atari took two years to release a port of Unix SVR4 for the TT, which ...
(1990)
** Atari MEGA STE (1991)
** ST BOOK (1991)
** Atari Falcon
The Atari Falcon030 (usually shortened to Atari Falcon), released in 1992, is the final personal computer from Atari Corporation. A high-end model of the Atari ST line, the machine is based on a Motorola 68030 CPU and a Motorola 56001 digital s ...
(1992)
* Atari XE series (1985)
** Atari XEGS (1987)
* Atari 7800 (1986)
* " Atari 2600 Jr." (1986)
* Atari Portfolio (1989)
* Atari Lynx
The Atari Lynx is a Fourth generation of video game consoles, fourth-generation handheld game console, hand-held game console released by Atari Corporation in September 1989 in North America and 1990 in Europe and Japan. It was the first handhe ...
(1989)
* Atari Panther (cancelled)
* Atari Jaguar
The Atari Jaguar is a home video game console developed by Atari Corporation and released in North America in November 1993. It is in the fifth generation of video game consoles, and it competed with Fourth generation of video game consoles, fo ...
(1993)
** Atari Jaguar CD (1995)
Notes
References
External links
A History of Tramel Technology / Atari by Michael D. Current
The Atari History Museum
– Atari historical archive site
AtariAge.com
Atari Gaming Headquarters
– Atari historical archive site
{{Authority control
1984 establishments in California
1984 establishments in New York (state)
1996 disestablishments in the United States
American companies established in 1984
Atari
Defunct computer hardware companies
Defunct computer systems companies
Defunct video game companies of the United States
Video game companies established in 1984
Video game companies disestablished in 1996
Defunct computer companies of the United States
Defunct computer companies based in New York (state)