Shiny Entertainment gets spit-shined, sold by Atari
by Kevin Kelly 
{ Oct 4th 2006 at 10:45AM }
Atari has sold Shiny Entertainment o make some bling for the troubled publisher. Atari's accountants want to know, "Have you paid Atari today?" The former crown jewel in Atari's empire, producing one extremely popular Enter the Matrix game, and one ... not so much; The Path of Neo. While the popularity of the Matrix films can account for the high sales of the first game, its poor poor ratings and gameplay contributed to the low sales of the sequel. Atari got stuck with the bill after the acquired Shiny as a result.Even Dave Perry couldn't save Shiny, jumping ship back in February in order to help them land on their feet. While they were on the chopping block for months, they end up without Earthworm Jim which Atari will keep, at Foundation 9. The new owner is combining Shiny with their other development team, The Collective, to work on an undisclosed feature film game in 2007. Any ideas as to what that might be? Let's just hope it isn't an Iron Man game with Robert Downey Jr. providing the voice.
This wouldn't be the first case of a movie tie-in causing financial troubles for Atari. Way back in 1982, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial for the Atari 2600 was released to extremely dismal sales and critical pounding. Atari printed four million E.T. game carts, but only sold one and a half million of them. To put it in perspective, more than ten million Atari 2600 consoles were in homes at the time, and they couldn't even sell half of what they'd printed. Which seems hard to do when you are selling a video game based on the most popular film of the year. The following year, Atari posted a loss of $536 million (1983 dollars!). As a direct result, Atari declared bankruptcy in 1984, and was broken up and sold in pieces. Many critics point to this as one of the biggest contributors to the video game crash of 1983. And thus ends the history lesson.
As far as Shiny, in a perfect world Atari would quitely go bankrupt (again), giving the Earthworm Jim license back as a last gasp, and we'd see that sequel finally.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
sully @ Oct 4th 2006 10:50AM
Why doesn't anyone ever mention MDK and MDK 2 when they talk about Shiny? Am I just *too* old-school?
aZn_1080p @ Oct 4th 2006 11:05AM
MDK 2 was badass!
Unfortunately, I predict M$ will throw out a big wad of cash and buy up Shiny now... then Shiny will do nothing for years at a time, and release a few mediocre games when M$ realizes they are just coasting since being bought up, just like what happened with Rare. For some reason as soon as M$ swallows up a developer, their output either slows WAY down (bizarre) or goes to shit (rare). I assume its because M$ sends over a bunch of their own 'IT Experts' to 'manage' the new subsidiary.
MosquitoControl @ Oct 4th 2006 11:08AM
Have you ever read a Dave Perry interview?
Guy is awful. He's convinced he's the most brilliant game designer currently out there, and blames the reaction to the Matrix games on stupid reviewers and dumb customers, not on any faults of the game and the dev team.
I'll make a point of avoiding anything he touches. He's like a more arrogant Derek Smart.
32_Footsteps @ Oct 4th 2006 11:11AM
Actually, don't forget that the current Atari is actually just Infogrames, who bought the rights to use the old Atari name. So they can't be blamed for the E.T. fiasco.
Of course, they could always joke that the name is cursed now - Hasbro had the name before selling it to Infogrames, and their video game arm tanked.
That aside, part of me wants to see a new EWJ game, and part of me fears it. I surely can't be the only one who remembers Earthworm Jim 3-D. Believe it or not, that game is the reason I can't stand Rockstar Games - how could they take a franchise so good and make a game so bad out of it?
I bet someone could do a great piece chronicling the travails of the EWJ license. I've never seen greatness so heavily stifled.
MosquitoControl @ Oct 4th 2006 11:12AM
And azp, again you show your misconstruing the facts to make Microsoft look worse than they are.
Rare didn't start to suck because Microsoft bought them. Rare was sold by Nintendo because they started to suck. The people that made Rare what it was had left the company, making it easy for Nintendo to release.
Why else would Nintendo, who didn't need the money, let their crown jewel go? Because they knew it was cracked. Why was it still worthwhile for Microsoft to buy it? Because the brand names would give them instant credibility (had they released in time, but the reorganization cost them plenty.) So Microsoft gambled and lost, making them arguably dumb, but you can't blame Rare's recent track record on them.
As for Bizarre, they're releasing games at a quicker pace now than ever. It wasn't unusual for them to go 4 or 5 years between games in the 90s.
crono141 @ Oct 4th 2006 11:17AM
Yeah, the last game rare made for nintendo was Star Fox Adventure (I think). I know some people liked it, but I thought it was terrible, couldn't stand it.
Rare helped save nintendo during the dark 64 years, but they've done nothing really "good" since.
Lou D @ Oct 4th 2006 11:21AM
Nintendo laughed all the way to the bank on that deal...though they should have settled for less money and kept the trademarks, then we'd have all the classics on the Virtual Console and Perfect Dark 0 could have been called something else and considered an original and new (crappy) I.P. for Microsoft.
Lou D @ Oct 4th 2006 11:48AM
I thought Star Fox Adventures kicked arse. Too bad Namco couldn't recreate the excellent graphics from 'Adventures to use in 'Assault. I've never been a big fan of flying simulators so I liked the "adventure" aspect of SF:Adventures and the ground missions of SF:Assault.
MosquitoControl @ Oct 4th 2006 12:32PM
They definitely lacked the foresight to keep the IP, which is why they're probably kicking themselves a bit.
PD0 really wasn't as bad as everyone makes it out to be, though. It had its flaws, undeniably, but it is hands down the best co-op shooter to date. Why? It's the first game designed from the ground-up for co-op. Even something simple, like the arrows constantly pointing you towards your partner, raise it head and shoulders above Halo 2. Going from PD0 co-op to Halo 2 co-op isn't much fun. It's too easy to lose your partner.
crono141 @ Oct 4th 2006 11:52AM
Agreed on the graphics. Adventure had amazing visual effects (like fox's fur). I just prefer the purist star-fox, in a plane. SF 64 is probably the best SF game, I think, though I love the music from original SF on SNES. Much better than anything since.
I'm currently loving SF DS. Even though its not "on rails", I like the variety and branching story.
Cabrill @ Oct 4th 2006 12:42PM
I wonder how this will affect my stock. I figured at $.75 per share I could buy thousands of shares, and then hope that it climbs back up, breaking the dollar mark and I'd be stinking rich. In reality it's less like investing and more like gambling because who knows what lies in store for Atari? All I know is that Atari still has brand recognition, and the stock is dirt cheap.
empfeix @ Oct 4th 2006 12:53PM
Correct me if im wrong but I believe MDK 2 is developed by Bioware. And yes it kicks butt.
And yes Earthworm Jim is crazy.
Mr Fact @ Oct 4th 2006 1:46PM
1. All internal studios were "on the auction block". It's not as if this one was singled out.
2. Shiny is not merging with the Collective or any other studio.
virtuadept @ Oct 4th 2006 1:56PM
Atari can bite my Shiny metal ... say, I actually think this is a good move. I mean, those Matrix movies were not just bad, they were REALLY bad. Dumping stupid studios that make crap movie tie-ins is good. Atari should stay away from crap movie tie-ins altogether. They need to develop more games with their lucrative D&D license. MORE RPG FOR TEH PEEEEOPLE!!!
Robotic House Plant @ Oct 4th 2006 2:42PM
ET was NOT the cause of the video game crash, although it certainly contributed. It was greed, lack of quality control, and too many competing systems that were acquiring system exclusives.
Back in those days, ANYONE could release a game and they did. They were so much garbage being introduced each week, it was unbelievable. And because they was so much available, prices dropped, so games were selling for practically nothing. Then comes along ET, which was priced high, and was a horrible game with bugs, which was also rushed to market, and the consumers were indifferent. This was a huge contrast to Pacman, which was equally disappointing, but consumers bought it anyway.
In the end, Warner communications wanted out of Atari, they sold the company to the guy that started Commodore, who then axed all divisions and concentrated on selling low cost computers developed outside of Atari. Separately, the video arcade game division was sold off, prospered for a while, then was acquired and disappeared.
The current Atari really has no direct relation to the company of old, other than the name was re-used, as the result of multiple acquisitions.
It's a shame because the original Atari was pretty cutting edge for their time, and developed a lot of technology (some never released!) and were involved in a lot of areas-- including the medical field.
StMadnes @ Oct 4th 2006 6:36PM
" While the popularity of the Matrix films can account for the high sales of the first game, its poor poor ratings and gameplay contributed to the low sales of the sequel."
Enter the Matrix was a great game! the Path of Neo was even better, making an impressive improvement on it's predecessor. that just goes to show that critics don't know shyt! everyone whom i have i spoken to that has played Path of Neo, loved it. But because of critics and their blind under-the-table methods for rating games, people often lose out on what could have been a great gaming experience. Seeing this, it's accurate to say that critics can also run developers out of business.
NoHitHair @ Oct 4th 2006 10:29PM
It would've been better if Atari liquidated Shiny and demanded that each employee be branded with a legality that barred them from practicing any form of programming or software design anywhere in the world.
Now instead they've passed on the flaming bag of crap to another hapless publisher which in turn sticks us gamers with another handful of worthless releases. Wonderful. I'm waiting on pins and needles.