The name Atari should be familiar to those who dabbled in electronic entertainment at least once. A company from the United States virtually single-handedly created an entire industry of home gaming consoles in the 1970s, reaching humongous economic profits. Atari has become one of the fastest growing companies in the history of the United States, turning developers into the ‘rock stars’ and becoming the first high-profile startup from the Silicon Valley.

The gaming console Atari 2600 was sold in millions of copies, not to mention the numerous cartridges - games such as Pac-Man, Pong, Mario Bros, Centipede and Donkey Kong instantly emerged as the sales hits. Despite this, in reality, the company has already been hampered by the financial difficulties for 35 years - since 1983 when the so-called "game crisis" happened and the market fell into a sharp decline. Repeatedly oversold and vaguely resembling the legendary corporation of the 70's, Atari deals mainly with online reels now.

It is noteworthy that the beginning of the decline of the gaming giant has long been associated with an unfortunate E.T. video game based on Steven Spielberg's 1982 "Alien" movie. Atari paid $ 22 million for the franchise. There has been a city legend around this game, according to which millions of cartridges with the game were ‘buried’ in Alamogordo’s dump.

So that’s no great surprise that Atari saw a new way to improve its financial position after the digital coin boom of 2017. According to the official announcement, the company intends to issue two new crypto-currencies at once, at least one of which will be used on gambling sites.

To implement the plan, the former industry giant received a 15% stake in the Gibraltar-based Infinity Networks, granting it the right to use the brand’s hallmarks. In the framework of this partnership, the companies intend to launch a digital entertainment platform, which will operate on the basis of the so-called Atari Token. The representatives of the gaming company also noted that they completed the deal "without any payments from Atari".

The name Atari Token itself is not so new - the company issued a game currency that was used for in-game purchases. It is not yet clear whether the new tokens will be used for the same purposes. In addition, Atari also plans to issue the second digital currency for the online slots - Pong Token.

"Having released the Atari Token, the company plans to create Pong Token, intended for crypto casinos in order to increase their attractiveness. The details will be published later," the announcement says.

With the announcement issued, the stocks of Atari immediately rose by 60%, Bloomberg revealed. The experts compare Atari’s initiative to the one of Kodak.  

"Our goal is to take strategic positions with limited financial risk to ensure the value of Atari's assets and brand," said Atari's CEO Frederic Cesne.

Earlier the investment company Kerrisdale Capital published the research of market prospects for Kodak. As stated in the report, the recent high-profile announcements of the blockchain initiatives are nothing more than "the last attempt to promote their shares on the way to inevitable bankruptcy."

Unfortunately, this comparison is not accidental. In reality, today's Atari has nothing to do with the legendary company of the 1970s and has lost its importance in the game and home consoles industries. Meanwhile, the company still uses a recognizable brand and a reputation for promoting its projects.

Atari’s new vector of development includes online casinos, gambling for real money and YouTube.

Most recently, the company also announced the launch of the new AtariBox console, but no further details have been revealed so far, except for the fact that the project is to be financed through the crowdfunding.

The innovative industry today is not only experiencing rapid growth but also groping for the first pitfalls. However, as always in such cases, after the launch of Atari digital coin, it is important for potential investors to remember that the appearance of the cherished words ‘blockchain’ and ‘cryptocurrency’ in press releases is usually not enough to make any company magically transformed into a market mogul. Hopefully, the rich professional background will assist Atari in building up the right strategy in this quite new branch for them.