Atari CEO: Beyond Gaming

Atari (ATAR - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr) CEO Jim Caparro is not the first to think he can help the company recapture its former glory.

Since its heyday in the early 1980s, the video-game pioneer has been split up and bounced around as part of several companies, including Hasbro (HAS - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr) and, most recently, Infogrames Entertaiment. Each of Atari's owners thought it could build on Atari's brand recognition to become a leading player in the video-game business, only to have those hopes eventually dashed.

Now Atari is considered an also-ran in the video-game publishing business, with revenue that's a fraction of that of competitors such as Electronic Arts (ERTS - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr), Activision (ATVI - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr) and even THQ (THQI - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr). With a new generation of consoles headed toward store shelves -- and development costs for those machines expected to skyrocket -- some analysts have questioned whether small publishers such as Atari can survive.

Atari CEO Jim Caparro

Caparro, who became the company's CEO in November, thinks that Atari can not only survive, but also thrive. And he has a plan to make that happen. Drawing on his long experience in the music industry, Caparro hopes to improve Atari's games and move the company beyond just selling boxed software.

At the E3 conference almost a fortnight ago, I spoke with Caparro about his turnaround effort and Atari's future.

Q: Atari has struggled of late. How can you turn things around?

It's in Atari's best interests to leverage the opportunities that are presented to Atari. I view, given my experience, that there's opportunity beyond just traditional gaming. There's this opportunity to differentiate ourselves from the other [game publishers], rather than just being a clone of all the others. And that's what we'll look to do. What we have now is a complete new management team that has been brought on with significant skill sets far beyond this one industry and proven track records.

We are talking about a complete, total transformation of the company, strategically, financially and creatively. What's happening is that, as those folks [with a lot of] creativity and respect [in the industry] are beginning to understand and appreciate all that we're doing to rebuild the infrastructure of the company, what's resonating back is that many of these great developers have had huge respect for the brand Atari and have over the years been very loyal to Atari. We have an icon with 96% world recognition factor. That's a huge opportunity for us if we look to exploit it properly.