Infogrames, the majority owner of dying video game legend Atari (ATAR), wants to buy the rest of the company for $1.68/share.
This clears up a bit of the cognitive dissonance we experienced earlier this week, when Infogrames said it was excited to turn Atari back into a games company again. That confused us, because Atari has been in the process of shutting itself down for many months: It no longer makes games. It has sold off much of the IP for the games it did own.And now it's just a money-losing games distributor, with a once-valuable brand that gets less so every day.
So: What could Infogrames do once it buys Atari? Presumably it will put the rest of the company out of its misery, and simply rebrand some of Infogrames titles with the Atari name. Then what? Maybe Infogrames CEO thinks he can get his old employer, Electronic Arts (ERTS), to swoop in with a generous buyout.
