New York-based Atari posted revenues for the 2006 first quarter of $24.2m, down 77% from $108.1m last year.
Despite last year’s profit of $12.1m, the group has made a loss of $32.8m after experiencing poor sales in 2005. Sales revenues from games publishing dropped to E12.8m from E97.5m a year earlier.
Atari says the 2004 release of DRIV3R, made for the PS2 and Xbox, was the driving force behind its 2004 profits, but its decision to offer less titles in 2006 in order to focus on debuting better quality games were factors leading up to this year’s disappointing results.
The company’s restructuring expenses, which included closing down studios in Santa Monica, California and Beverly, Massachusetts, totaled $2.2m and also affected the size of its Q1 loss.
Atari’s revenues sent Q1 sales of parent firm Infogrames down by 66%. However, Infogrames is claiming that the results were not a surprise and were actually part of its overall market strategy. The company said it delayed the launch of its main games, such as The Matrix: Path of Neo, Mark Ecko’s Getting Up and Dragon Ball Z, with the intention of releasing them at the Christmas period, when it hopes to recover better sales figures.
