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News Atari to aquire Night Dive Studios (abandonware remaster studio)

Very important to stress this isn't the same atari that was running those weird ass endeavors but a different atari that bought the name and logo from those people
 
Atari has been doing a lot of "remasters" of their classic games under the Recharged brand so it's not completely out of left field they'd go for NightDive. That said, they're seemingly still involved with Web3.0 stuff so it's fair to be a little skeptical.

I'm honestly more surprised that ND wasn't gobbled up by Embracer.
 
I wonder if Nightdive still pitch remaster ideas to Nintendo and if this acquisition would help/hinder any potential collaborations between the 2.
 
In addition to their well received retro collections and Recharged remasters, this current Atari has also been publishing Jeff Minter's recent games (Tempest 4000, Akka Arrh).
 
Jahranimo said:
I can't remember, what have they pitched to them already?
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One of the Nightdive guys were tweeting last year them at they kept pitching remaster projects to Nintendo (One being Eternal Darkness) but Ninty were never really keen for whatever reason. The fact he tweeted about it might make the chances of them working together even slimmer tbh.
 
ITSMILNER said:
One of the Nightdive guys were tweeting last year them at they kept pitching remaster projects to Nintendo (One being Eternal Darkness) but Ninty were never really keen for whatever reason. The fact he tweeted about it might make the chances of them working together even slimmer tbh.
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Ahh ok that is ringing some bells. I imagine they just openly stated that because they knew it was never going to happen.
 
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note: the big short-term change here is that Night Dive can finally update the Blood re-release again, according to their lead network engineer. the reason why it was abandoned was because they lost access to the Steam depot, and by the time Valve updated the servers so multiple devs can access them at once. the old Atari lost interest.
Not quite. We were interested in doing more patches long term but didn't have access to the Steam depot anymore. At the time, Steam lacked the ability to share depots, and by the time it was added too much time had passed under the old management to consider it.

What I will say is I personally would like to continue updating Blood (I have many LTS plans for multiplayer), and hopefully this can now happen with this purchase.
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Stephen even (jokingly) stated the main reason they got acquired was for this.

it's also extremely important to consider Jeff Minter's current relationship with them, as he had a massive feud with the older staff. notably cumlinating with them filing a C&D to his Tempest spiritual successor at one point.

the fact he's actively supportive of it's current form is a very good sign that they've changed significantly.
 
Feels bizarre that there could be a good Atari again and during my lifetime to boot.

knocks on wood
 
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www.gamesindustry.biz

Nightdive: "Atari is on the rise, and we wanted to be part of that"

Why Nightdive has joined Atari
www.gamesindustry.biz www.gamesindustry.biz

Christopher Dring talked to Nightdive peeps about the acquisition. Looks like the idea is that things mostly don't change (they still want to do more obscure stuff and have an announcement planned soon) while getting the financial and legal support of a larger entity like Atari. Some excerpts I found interesting:

"Sometimes, with a larger company like Nintendo, you need to get your foot in the door on the development side," Kick says. "And typically you'd start with something much smaller than, say, GoldenEye. We worked really hard to pull together a compelling pitch for Nintendo and Microsoft with GoldenEye. There were some contractual obligations, I believe, that prevented them from going that route."
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"There are some famous games from our history that have just been prohibitive for a number of reasons, whether that's been licensing complexity or financial that will hopefully be cleared up. Maybe we will finally see No One Lives Forever as a result of this, that's my hope. It would be a dream come true, not only for us, but any one of the fans who have been following Nightdive for this long."
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So basically, they made some very bad budgeting, project scoping & hiring decisions regarding the upcoming System Shock remake, their Hail Mary pitch for a Goldeneye remaster fell through and they essentially bankrupted themselves; so they turned to Atari to bail them out.

Sounds like they're gonna fit right in.
 
Dardan Sandiego said:
Looking into this, Atari today has practically nothing to do with pre-banckruptcy Atari. They have new leadership and are completely restructured.
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Yup. It's literally not even the same company anymore.

Atari is the biggest Ship of Theseus in gaming history.
 
Dcubed said:
So basically, they made some very bad budgeting, project scoping & hiring decisions regarding the upcoming System Shock remake,
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to clarify this, the main issue was that they were indecisive on if the game should be a more basic remake, or a full reimagining. even hiring a few writers to add new content.

it was eventually delayed once they realized a more basic remake was the better option, alongside switching which engine it was using (Unity to Unreal Engine 4)

Also, the idea that it "essentially bankrupted" them is a bit of an exaggeration. they notably put it on hold for a few months to get more funding from their re-releases. and they've released a few fairly successful projects like DOOM 64 and Quake since then.
 
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