Atari is a brand name that has been owned by several entities since its inception in 1972. It is currently owned by French company Atari SA through a subsidiary named Atari Interactive. The original Atari, Inc., founded in Sunnyvale, California, USA in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney, was a pioneer in arcade games, home video game consoles, and home computers. The company's products, such as Pong and the Atari 2600, helped define the electronic entertainment industry from the 1970s to the mid-1980s.
Xbox Game Studios is an American video game publisher based in Redmond, Washington. It was established in March 2000, spun out from an internal Games Group, for the development and publishing of video games for Microsoft Windows. It has since expanded to include games and other interactive entertainment for the namesake Xbox platforms, other desktop operating systems, Windows Mobile and other mobile platforms, and web-based portals.
Ken Kutaragi is a Japanese engineering technologist and businessman. He is the former chairman and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE), the video game division of Sony Corporation, and current president and CEO of Cyber AI Entertainment. He is known as "The Father of the PlayStation", as he oversaw the development of the original console and its successors and spinoffs, including the PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable and the PlayStation 3. He departed Sony in 2007, a year after the PlayStation 3 was released.
David Perry is a Northern Irish video game developer and programmer. He became prominent for programming platform games for 16-bit home consoles in the early to mid 1990s, including Disney's Aladdin, Cool Spot, and the Earthworm Jim series. He founded Shiny Entertainment, where he worked from 1993 to 2006. Perry created games for companies such as Disney, 7 Up, McDonald's, Hemdale, and Warner Bros. In 2008 he was presented with an honorary doctorate from Queen's University Belfast for his services to computer gaming. He was the co-founder & CEO of cloud-based games service Gaikai, which was acquired by Sony Computer Entertainment. In 2017 Perry became the co-founder & CEO of a customer intelligence startup called GoVYRL, Inc. developing a new advanced brand dashboard called Carro.
2003 saw many sequels and prequels in video games, such as Tony Hawk's Underground, Madden NFL 2004, NBA Live 2004, ESPN NBA Basketball, Final Fantasy X-2, Mario Kart: Double Dash, Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, Sonic Heroes, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Uru: Ages Beyond Myst, and WWE SmackDown! Here Comes the Pain. New intellectual properties included Beyond Good & Evil, Boktai: The Sun is in Your Hand, Call of Duty, Disgaea, Drakengard, Manhunt, PlanetSide, TrackMania, True Crime: Streets of LA, and Viewtiful Joe.
Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC (SIE) is a multinational video game and digital entertainment company owned by Sony. SIE primarily operates the PlayStation brand of video game consoles and products. In 1993, Sony and Sony Music Entertainment Japan jointly established Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. in Tokyo. SCE released the video game console PlayStation in Japan the following year and subsequently in the United States and Europe the year after. In 2010, SCE underwent a corporate split and established Sony Network Entertainment International (SNEI). SNEI provided gaming-related services through the PlayStation Network, including the sale of game titles and content on the PlayStation Store, as well as offering PlayStation Plus. In 2016, SCE and SNEI merged to form Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC, with its headquarters located in San Mateo, California, U.S.
Kazuo "Kaz" Hirai is a Japanese businessman. He is best known as the former chairman of Sony Corporation, serving from April 2018 to June 2019, as well as president and CEO from April 2012 to April 2018. He also served as a board member of Sony Computer Entertainment and chairman and co-CEO of Sony Entertainment. He was noted by Entertainment Weekly as one of the most powerful executives in the entertainment industry. He led the Sony Computer Entertainment division between 2007 and 2012, and then became president and CEO of Sony in April 2012. Through his tenure as CEO, Sony experienced a resurgence during the 2010s. In 2018, Hirai stepped down as president and CEO, becoming chairman of Sony Corporation. He fully retired from Sony in June 2019, otherwise remaining as a senior adviser to the company.
Jade Raymond is a Canadian video game developer, best known for helping create the Assassin's Creed and Watch Dogs franchises, and for building Ubisoft Toronto and EA Motive Studios. In March 2021, Raymond announced the founding of a new independent development team called Haven Studios, which was later acquired by Sony Interactive Entertainment in July 2022, making them a first-party developer for PlayStation Studios.
Psygnosis Limited was a British video game developer and publisher headquartered at Wavertree Technology Park in Liverpool. Founded in 1984 by Ian Hetherington, Jonathan Ellis, and David Lawson, the company initially became known for well-received games on the Atari ST and Amiga. In 1993, it became a wholly owned subsidiary of Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) and began developing games for the original PlayStation. It later became a part of SCE Worldwide Studios. The company was the oldest and second largest development house within SCE's European stable of developers, and became best known for franchises such as Lemmings, Wipeout, Formula One, and Colony Wars.
Q-Games, Limited is a video game developer based in Nakagyō-ku, Kyoto, Japan which works closely with both Nintendo and Sony.
Media Molecule Ltd. is a British video game developer based in Guildford, Surrey. Founded in 2006 by Mark Healey, Alex Evans, David Smith, and Kareem Ettouney, Sony Computer Entertainment acquired the firm in 2010. It became part of SCE Worldwide Studios. The company is best known for developing the LittleBigPlanet series, 2013's Tearaway, and 2020's Dreams for PlayStation consoles.
Atari, Inc. is an American subsidiary and publishing arm of Atari SA. Formed in 1993 as GT Interactive Software Corp., the video game publishing arm of GoodTimes Home Video, the company was subsequently majority acquired by Infogrames in 1999, and later renamed to Infogrames, Inc. As part of Infogrames's company-wide re-branding following its 2001 acquisition of Hasbro Interactive, which owned the rights to the Atari brand, Infogrames, Inc. became known as Atari, Inc. in May 2003. On October 11, 2008, Infogrames completed its acquisition of Atari, Inc., making it a wholly owned subsidiary.
Shuhei Yoshida is a Japanese businessman and gaming industry veteran. He was the President of SIE Worldwide Studios for Sony Interactive Entertainment from 2008 to 2019, before moving onto other SIE-related projects. Yoshida has been a key member of the PlayStation brand since its original concept, having been part of the company since 1993.
Robot Entertainment is an American video game development and publishing company created by the founders of the defunct Ensemble Studios, after being shut down by Microsoft. Other members of the company founded another studio, Bonfire Studios. Robot Entertainment was responsible for maintaining and updating Halo Wars until February 28, 2010, when Microsoft Studios assumed control of the game servers and updates. Also, in January 2011, Microsoft Studios took over updates and servers for Age of Empires III. Robot Entertainment have since released games including Orcs Must Die!, Orcs Must Die! 2, Hero Academy, Echo Prime, Orcs Must Die! Unchained, Hero Academy 2 and ReadySet Heroes.
Atari SA is a French video game holding company headquartered in Paris. Its subsidiaries include Atari Interactive and Atari, Inc. It is the current owner of the Atari brand through Atari Interactive.
PlayStation Studios is a division of Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) that oversees the video game development at the studios owned by SIE. The division was established as SCE Worldwide Studios in September 2005 and rebranded as PlayStation Studios in 2020.
Cloud gaming, sometimes called gaming on demand or game streaming, is a type of online gaming that runs video games on remote servers and streams them directly to a user's device, or more colloquially, playing a game remotely from a cloud. It contrasts with traditional means of gaming, wherein a game runs locally on a user's video game console, personal computer, or mobile device.
Video gaming in the United States is one of the fastest-growing entertainment industries in the country. The American video game industry is the largest video game industry in the world. According to a 2020 study released by the Entertainment Software Association, the yearly economic output of the American video game industry in 2019 was $90.3 billion, supporting over 429,000 American jobs. With an average yearly salary of about $121,000, the latter figure includes over 143,000 individuals who are directly employed by the video game business. Additionally, activities connected to the video game business generate $12.6 billion in federal, state, and local taxes each year. World Economic Forum estimates that by 2025 the American gaming industry will reach $42.3 billion while worldwide gaming industry will possibly reach US$270 billion. The United States is one of the nations with the largest influence in the video game industry, with video games representing a significant part of its economy.
Stadia was a cloud gaming service developed and operated by Google. Known in development as Project Stream, the service debuted through a closed beta in October 2018, and publicly launched in November 2019. The service was to compete with Sony's PlayStation Plus cloud streaming, Nvidia's GeForce Now, Amazon's Luna, and Microsoft's Xbox Cloud Gaming. Stadia initially received a mixed reception from reviewers, with most criticism directed at its limited library of games and lack of promised features. Google had initially intended to develop in-house games in addition to hosting games produced by third parties, but abandoned this plan in February 2021, shutting down its studios. The service continued to sell third party games, and Google offered the game-streaming technology as a white-label product. Google announced in September 2022 that it would be shutting down Stadia; the service went offline permanently on January 18, 2023, at 11:59 pm PST.
In the video game industry, a console war describes the competition between two or more video game console manufacturers in trying to achieve better consumer sales through more advanced console technology, an improved selection of video games, and general marketing around their consoles. While console manufacturers are generally always trying to out-perform other manufacturers in sales, these console wars engage in more direct tactics to compare their offerings directly against their competitors or to disparage the competition in contrast to their own, and thus the marketing efforts have tended to escalate in back-and-forth pushes.
