Atari
Atari is the current name of the French video game holding company formerly known as Infogrames. The original Atari was founded by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney in 1971 as Syzygy Engineering, and was incorporated as Atari on June 27, 1972. In 1976, Warner Communications purchased Atari as they wanted to get into the interactive entertainment business. After the North American video game crash of 1983, Warner decided to sell Atari. On July 1, 1984, they sold the home division of the company to Tramel Technology, while Warner kept the arcade division of Atari, which was renamed Atari Games. The home division of Atari became a corporation known as Atari Corp. In July 1996, Atari merged with JTS Inc. to form JTS Corp. In March 1998, JTS sold the Atari name and assets to Hasbro Interactive. In December 2000, Infogrames purchased Hasbro Interactive and gained control of Atari. In December 2000, Infogrames purchased Hasbro Interactive and gained control of Atari.
Infogrames' North American branch was known as GT Interactive (which they acquired in 1999). In 2003, they renamed GT Interactive to Atari, Inc and incorporated Humongous Entertainment (which they gained from the purchase of GT Interactive) into their Atari division. The company formerly known as GT Interactive became known as Atari in 2003.
Atari sold Humongous Entertainment back to their Infogrames parent in 2006, but Atari still publishes games developed by the now renamed Humongous, Inc.
In May 2009, Namco Bandai bought Atari Europe and Infogrames announced it was getting out of the distribution business in Europe. That same month, they changed their name to Atari, bringing an end to the Infogrames brand name. The North American branch known as Atari (formerly GT Interactive) kept the title Atari, Inc. and the parent company (formerly Infogrames) became Atari, SA.