In an interview with the two men, Gardner told MCV, “within five years 90 per cent of our products will be online.”
According to the interview, the recent steps taken by the company have all been towards the end of moving Atari away from retail. Parent company Infogrames recently sold a 34 percent stake in its European and Asian distribution business to Namco Bandai. According to Gardner, this was just the beginning of what will become a takeover of that business by Namco, as he explained, “Over five years, Namco Bandai will probably own the majority of it, and it will no longer be our responsibility and Atari will be just an online company.”
Atari president Phil Harrison also pointed to the recent hire of SingStar lead Paulina Bozek as an indication that Atari would be “hiring the absolute best quality people we can who have experience in delivering mass market, high-end, quality games experiences and bringing those skills and production capabilities to those new business models and distribution methods.”
Harrison went on to state that the future of Atari was “online distribution agnostic,” explaining the company expected to have a major presence on both gaming-centric DLC platforms and mass market platforms including iTunes and MySpace.