News

Atari sells Cryptic Studios to Chinese MMO publisher
Posted: 31.05.2011 17:24 by JonahFalcon Comments: 1
Atari has announced that it has sold Cryptic Studios, developer of City of Heroes, Champions Online and Star Trek Online, for $50M to Perfect World Entertainment, a major Chinese-based MMO publisher, best known for such MMOs as Perfect World, Ether Saga Online and Jade Dynasty. Cryptic had originally purchased Cryptic for $27M.

Perfect World CEO Michael Chi stated that the purchase would help Perfect World, already a giant in Asia, to establish a presence in the Western MMO community, "This strategic acquisition will add attractive game titles to our portfolio, which will help us further penetrate into the US and global online game markets. More importantly, Cryptic Studios highly reputable development team and its technology platform will further strengthen our well-established R&D capabilities."

Cryptic Studios made $23M in the last financial year at a $7.5M loss, which was proof of improvement after an $18M loss the year before. Atari had announced they'd "divested" themselves of Cryptic a two weeks ago.
Source: Develop

Comments

By herodotus (SI Herodotus) on May 31, 2011
herodotus
I'll be waiting a bit longer in this case before renewing my "STO" sub to see what exactly happens with the MMO. I'm not intereste in promoting "perfect World" and hope that more funding is made available to Cryptic to further develop what is essentially the best MMO on the market, at least for me.