Atari's slow collapse continues with the loss of the company's most lucrative franchise. No, not Ghostbusters -- it's Dragon Ball, which has produced approximately a billion video games so far. The franchise will now go back to Namco Bandai, the original Japanese publisher of the series. According to a statement by Namco Bandai, the agreement will run for five years beginning in January 2010 and will supersede any existing publishing rights. In addition, Namco Bandai will publish the upcoming Dragon Ball: Raging Blast game for Xbox 360 and PS3, Dragon Ball: Revenge of King Piccolo for Wii, and Dragon Ball Z: Attack of the Saiyans for DS all this year.

The loss of the Dragon Ball franchise is perhaps the greatest evidence of the financial challenges that face Atari. Earlier this year, the company pulled out of E3, sold its European publishing division, and even sold exclusivity rights for Ghostbusters, all presumably for a small cash influx. With Phil Harrison recently stepping down from his position at the company, it's clear that Atari will see even more troubled times ahead.

[INTERIOR] [SPACE STATION SORBET VII]

ENSIGN CAMEO: Sir! I'm picking up several signatures on my gamma pulse spectrum radar!
GENERAL CONSENSUS: Is it an attack? Did the Radical Space Sect find us?
ENSIGN CAMEO: No, sir, these objects are too small ... too listless and apathetic to be ships! It's like they have no particular trajectory ... they're completely unpredictable.
GENERAL CONSENSUS: Dr. Diana Fhire! What do you make of this?
DR. FHIRE: Hmm, I've never seen anything like this, possibly because I'm meant to be this film's gratuitous eye candy and thus possess highly suspect academic qualifications like Denise Richards did in that one Bond movie. Anyway, my tachyon scanner indicates that we are not dealing with biological matter. In fact, the substance seems ... no, that can't be!
GENERAL CONSENSUS: What? What are we dealing with here?
DR. FHIRE: Rocks. Big rocks. In space.
GENERAL CONSENSUS: My god. Space rocks ... but how?
DR. FHIRE: It's only a theory, but I believe coming into contact with these ... these ... "asteroids" could kill us severely.
GENERAL CONSENSUS: How ... how many of them pose a threat?

[CLOSE UP ON DR. FHIRE]

DR. FHIRE: All of them, general.

[CLOSER UP ON DR. FHIRE]

DR. FHIRE. All. Of. Them.

[INTERIOR] [ALARMS SOUND]

GENERAL CONSENSUS: Ensign! Get me gruff-but-likable washout pilot Jack Plot. He's the only one that can fly the experimental Triangulon Mark V --
DR. FHIRE: The Triangulon?! Are you crazy? That thing's still a prototype! It's not tested for --
GENERAL CONSENSUS: We don't have a choice, Diana. I'm not getting my ass kicked by these roids!

Following the tenets of a religion is supposed to net you blessings and well-being, but that's just not tangible enough for us. Judaism has wised up, though. Those who follow its teachings in regards to keeping kosher – specifically by blasting a ham at a bar mitzvah in Ghostbusters – will be rewarded with an Achievement (and a Trophy, we presume) called "Kosher." It's only 10 points, but still, it's substantial.

Man, why does all the best stuff happen to Jews?

[Via What They Play]

According to Chart Track's UK software sales figures from last week, we know the Barry Pepper-voiced free-roamer, Prototype, has managed to secure the top spot. It wasn't an easy battle, as Radical Entertainment's title had some stiff competition in Terminal Reality's Ghostbusters, which made its debut in the UK last week.

The ghost bustin' reunion was not enough to topple the "go anywhere, kill everything" game, and managed to secure the bronze with a third place showing. It should be noted that this is the all-format charts, and with it being a PS3 exclusive in the territory (Xbox 360 owners do have options, though), third is pretty impressive for a game on just one platform (excluding Wii Fit). As for second place, The Sims 3 dropped down from its cushy throne last week thanks to a 49% decline in sales. Don't feel too bad for the game, though -- it did have the best PC launch in EA's history, you know.

We suppose it's a little ironic that the multiplayer for the PC version of Ghostbusters is little more than a phantom. That is to say that the PC version doesn't actually have multiplayer at all, a fact our compatriots at Big Download reported earlier this week. Naturally, PC gamers probably have a few questions about this, chief among them being, "What gives?"

When asked by Big Download for a response, Atari sent along comments from Dan Irish, CEO of Threewave, the game's multiplayer developer. According to Irish, Threewave had intended to create multiplayer for both consoles and the PC, but eventually decided to focus on the console versions in order to keep the quality bar as high as possible. According to Irish, if the company had attempted to develop both the PC and console versions simultaneously, "something would have to suffer."

Probably not the answer PC players were hoping for. Another question that has yet to be answered, according to Big Download, is whether Atari and Threewave have any plans to add multiplayer in the future.

Richard Leadbetter – Director of HD consultancy Digital Foundry and author of Eurogamer's multiplatform comparison Face-off features – tweeted that playing Ghostbusters on the PS3 was like "time-warping back to the dawn of PS3 development." Ouch! That's especially painful to read considering the high hopes Terminal Reality – developers of the just-released Ghostbusters game – have for their multiplatform Infernal Engine.

Internet reports of a less-than-stellar PS3 version of the title originated at Lens of Truth on Monday, were later corroborated by Gamezine.co.uk and, following tomorrow's publication of Leadbetter's most recent Face-off feature, will be further corroborated by Eurogamer. Confusing the issue even further is the following quote from Terminal Reality's Mark Randel, who told VG247 last year, "We're one of the few developers who love the PS3 and have a great time with it. We have great technology for the PS3 and we want to show it off."

Instead of leaving it up to internet Matlocks, we asked Terminal Reality to comment on the controversy. A spokesperson for the developer told us, "For the record, the PS3 version [of Ghostbusters] is softer due to the 'quincunx' antialiasing filter and the fact we render at about 75% the resolution of the 360 version. So you cannot directly compare a screen shot of one to the other unless you scale them properly. The PS3 does have less available RAM than the 360 – but we managed to squeeze 3 out of 4 textures as full size on the PS3."

So: is the PS3 "maxed out"? Or is Terminal Reality's engine – despite comments to the contrary – just not up to snuff on the PS3? With most recent multiplatform titles performing comparably, if not identically, on both the Xbox 360 and PS3 consoles, we'd be inclined to agree with Mr. Leadbetter: it's like "time-warping back to the dawn of PS3 development" when PS3 games were routinely outperformed by their Xbox 360 counterparts. Let's hope the irony of the situation is lost on Ghostbusters' exclusive European publisher ... Sony. As well as the franchise's owner ... Sony Pictures.


Source – Head2Head: Ghostbusters
Source – @Digital_Foundry

Listen ... do you smell something? Stripped of its license, Ghostbusters is a passable, if largely forgettable game. The entire experience is held together on the merits of its source material alone, with occasionally witty dialog and story draped like a sheet across what amounts to inconsistent gameplay and level design that would make most amateur modders cringe.

Still, given Ghostbusters' rocky road to retail, I suppose we should be grateful that there's a game to complain about at all.

According to a number of reports from North American purchasers of Ghostbusters: The Video Game, the highly anticipated film-to-game adaptation is more than capable of crossing the stream known as the Atlantic Ocean. Yes, players are claiming that the Xbox 360 version of the title isn't region-locked, and can be played on consoles worldwide -- even in Europe, where Sony recently scored the publishing rights for the title, turning it into a PS3 exclusive.

In other words, for Europe's import-savvy 360 owners, the chance to digitally don a proton pack is just one transatlantic cargo plane journey away.

Variety is reporting that "sources" reveal Cryptic is working on a Neverwinter Nights MMO for Atari to launch in 2011. Cryptic Studios is currently working on Champions Online and Star Trek Online, expected to launch this September and next March, respectively.

Considering that Neverwinter Nights -- developed by BioWare, with the sequel helmed by Obsidian -- was a mini-MMO to begin with, the idea of the series going totally online isn't a stretch. The only thing that's really a stretch is if Atari will be around to see it all come to pass.

[Via Massively]

Despite Infogrames standing for entertainment that rocks our world, the armadillo branding is gone and now only Atari remains. CEO Jim Wilson tells 1UP that the company is now officially doing away with the Infogrames branding to put focus on the more "popular target brand" of Atari.

Well, hopefully the name change helps. Currently the company "moved" its president, shut down European operations, shifted publishing rights for a major title and couldn't afford won't make it to E3. We're sure there's more, but let's try to stay optimistic with the name change. For what's in a name?

An Atari financial document apparently reveals that the company expects Star Trek Online to launch no later than March 31, 2010. ShackNews read the report, which also states that players will boldly go where no one has gone before on "both console and PC formats."

We've hailed Cryptic for any official comment and will update as soon as it responds.

[Via Massively]

Atari president Phil Harrison, who joined the company last year, has taken a position as "non-executive director." According to Eurogamer, the move is a result of Atari's new focus on North American operations, following the sale of its European distribution to Namco Bandai.

Parent company Infogrames announced a loss of €226.1 million ($319.6m) for the last fiscal year, due in part to the loss of revenue that would have come in from the distribution business. As a result, Atari said it has canceled some of its projects to focus on "more cost-effective" games.

The identity of the canceled projects is unknown, but Atari released a hint of what some of the new, cost-effective, mass-market games would be: Cryptic Studios will create "a series of new games based on Atari's existing and historically successful IPs."

Atari's latest trailer for Ghostbusters: The Video Game finally gives us a look at the DS version -- sort of. You can see it on the tiny screens when the floating DS turns to face us. Right there, behind the character art. We think it looks pretty good.

While we're on the subject of Ghostbusters on DS, we hope the Ghostbusters' games' approach to multiplatform game design pays off, because it's the kind of approach we like to see. Rather than having developers create stripped-down versions of another developer's game, Atari (actually original publisher Sierra, we guess) got Terminal Reality and Red Fly, developers who know what they're doing on their respective consoles, to make different games for the different platforms. So this DS game isn't a crappy version of an Xbox game, for example.

Originally slated to don its cape and take to the skies on July 14, Cryptic Studios' next superhero MMO, Champions Online, is staying put until September 1. The City of Heroes creator today announced a delay for the Atari-published title, with the studio's design director and Champions executive producer Bill Roper commenting, "Through our constant dialogue with our vocal and supportive community of beta testers, we quickly realized that in order to implement certain features that we all considered important the development of Champions Online would require more time."

But what features? We asked Roper, who revealed that, in addition to more instanced and scripted missions, the extra development time is being used to provide a larger variety of core powers, travel powers and upgrades. It's also allowing Cryptic that special something every developer wishes they had more of: time to polish. "We want the launch to be as smooth as possible, with the game as polished as it can be. We're glad to have the extra time to do so," he said, no doubt holding a soft cloth and a DVD to illustrate the polishing process.

[Via Gamespot]

Terminal Reality hopes other developers ain't afraid of licensing the studio's Infernal Engine to use on future projects. In fact, the Ghostbusters dev's VP of sales and marketing, Joe Kreiner, tells GI.biz that his goal is to secure "at least another half a dozen to a dozen within the next year, at minimum." An attainable goal, according to Kreiner, which if achieved would put the number of customers in Terminal Reality's containment unit somewhere in the neighborhood of twelve since the middleware first opened up to developers in February.

Rather than a short-term solution, Kreiner further notes that the Infernal Engine was designed to work across multiple CPUs and SPUs, something the marketing chief believes "future-proofs" the tech for use on later console platforms down the line. In the short term, however, he adds that Ghostbusters shows off the engine "really well." Hopefully other studios will come calling now that the game's publisher merry-go-round has (hopefully) stopped ahead of the title's anticipated June launch.