Atari and Cryptic File for Divorce - Page 2
Star Trek: Online, the MMO love-child produced by the union of Atari and Cryptic Studios, was born about a year later.
And how was it? How did the Star Trek MMO turn out?
It had great character creation, some fun PvE, mediocre PvP, and almost nothing to do when players got to the endgame. People played for a month or two, hit the level cap, got bored, and went back to WoW.
Sound familiar? Any gamer could've told them what their new game was going to look like.
In fact, Star Trek: Online probably was worse than previous Cryptic MMOs, because it was clearly released half-finished. For instance, there was no PvE on the Klingon side. Star Trek was probably released too early due to pressure to meet Wall Street profit expectations.
Last week, after a little more than two years of marriage, Atari announced it had decided to "divest" itself of Cryptic Studios. The two parties admitted their marriage was a failure and decided to go their separate ways. Wall Street might have been surprised, but gamers knew it was coming.
The marriage of Atari and Cryptic Studios was one born of hope and the desire to make hordes of money from the MMO market. The union was suppose to produce a WoW-killer offspring: With Atari's financial backing and market power, Cryptic would deliver an MMO that would run faster, jump higher, and bring in boatloads of cash for everyone.
Everyone in a suit thought they couldn't lose. Gamers could've told them different.
The bottom line, from Atari's press release: "The net results of Cryptic was a loss... on a full year basis of approximately -€5.3 million as of Fiscal Year 2010/2011, as compared to... a loss of -€12.6 million on a full basis for Fiscal Year 2009/ 2010, respectively."
In terms of dollars, the marriage cost Atari more than $24 million.
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