Atari has reported a decline in revenue, and has closed down Eden Studios, the French developers responsible for Test Drive Unlimited 2.
Revenues for the publisher for the last financial year were $51.3 million, down from $77.8 million the year before.
Losses were $4.8 million, down from $8 million due to closing off some of it’s least profitable assets – that includes Eden, according to Gamasutra, and GameOne, a French TV channel.
Atari plan to focus more on mobile gaming, saying it had seen “encouraging” figures from iOS games like Breakout: Boost and some retro compilations, which have together sold more than 10 million downloads.
Update: Atari has been in touch to let us know that they are, in fact, not closing Eden Studios and will continue to support their games in the future – most notably Test Drive Unlimited 2. We apologise for the confusion in this matter. The company issued a statement as follows:
Our earnings statement contained a report about the divestment of Eden Studios. We want to make it clear that the studio has not closed and that we will continue to support the console and PC games of Eden Studios, notably Test Drive Unlimited 2, while this process is underway. The divestment is in line with our previously stated strategy of exploiting our popular intellectual property library on mobile devices, where he have seen strong initial success, and via online games and licensing
Via Gamasutra.
gazzagb
What’s happened to Test Drive Ferrari then? Or is that being developed by a different studio?
Forrest_01
Probably canned after TDU2 to be fair – I haven’t heard good things.
gazzagb
TDU2 was great, but I think just having a game with only Ferrari’s hasn’t really appealed to anyone.
Forrest_01
Oh really? Fair enough – I think i have just caught the moans about it (something about connectivity if i recall) & nothing positive.
So you rate it then? Is it more arcade or sim?
david24
test drive Ferrari is being made by slightly mad studios. the developers of the gtr, project C.A.R.S and shift racing games, its a track based racer that looks to be heavily based on shift 2 and is only using the test drive name because its being published by Atari. oh and tdu2 was awful!
mugsybalone
Apparently it’s due for release this month, developed by Slightly Mad Studios. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test_Drive:_Ferrari_Legends
Forrest_01
I stand corrected (to be fair though, i didn’t even know it was ‘a thing’ until gazza mentioned it!). :)
mugsybalone
Me either, suffered the combined effects of “that could be cool” and, “crap, it’s canned” :D
LTG Davey
Can’t say I’ve enjoyed many of Atari’s efforts but still a shame to see them moving over to the darkside of “gaming” (and I use the term very loosely when talking about mobile downloads)
cam the man
Enjoyed the first Test Drive Unlimited game but the second was a disappointment.
Dazbobaby
So is the revenue of $51m still in profit? If so why close a studio thats making a profit albeit a smaller one than previous years. Profit is still positive while closing is a negative.
david24
i believe that’s just turnover
Jakster123x
And another publisher is lost to the mobile market
Sympo
Atari have never had a strong enough presence this gen to be honest since DBZ or Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 other games have either failed or never was interesting. I don’t mind seeing a few games on the mobile platforms though.