Atari and Animoca Brands will expanding their existing partnership so that Animoca now has global development and distribution rights to 15 additional Atari games for blockchain and NFTs, which includes Pong, Asteroids, Centipede, Missile Command, and 12 others.
Frederic Chesnais, CEO of Atari, commented: “We are thrilled to strengthen our partnership with Animoca Brands, whose vision for the integration of blockchain technology into video games is perfectly aligned with ours. When we signed the initial agreement, we always envisaged to expand it to the most iconic games of the Atari catalog to turn them into blockchain games. Our ambition for the Atari VCS is to develop an ecosystem that gives users access to the largest number of tools for creation and entertainment. Blockchain games inside a virtual world are a perfect example for the types of entertainment that we want to propose to the Atari VCS userbase. It was the natural choice to ask our partner Animoca Brands, whose leadership in blockchain gaming is unquestioned, to offer their blockchain gaming content directly on the Atari VCS.”
Yat Siu, co-founder and chairman of Animoca Brands, said: “This significant expansion of our partnership with Atari allows Animoca Brands to leverage some of the greatest ever classic games into our blockchain strategy and on our popular platforms, including the hypercasual gaming platform Gamee and the digital collectibles platform Quidd. We are very excited at the opportunity to catapult these nostalgic, history-making games into the future.”
This deal will last through January 31, 2025. All of the games included in the deal are Centipede, Pong, Breakout, Asteroids, Missile Command, Crystal Castles, Adventure, Lunar Lander, Tempest, Millipede, Night Driver, Agent X, Space Duel, Star Raiders, and Major Havoc. They also have until December 31, 2020 to swap the last 5 games for any other Atari title, and if Animoca Brands reaches specific revenue milestones, they will gain the rights to 13 additional Atari games at no extra cost.
Animoca Brands now has the right to distribute the titles through their platforms, which include Gamee and Quidd. For the interested, Gamee is a "popular casual games platform" and Quidd is "the leading global marketplacew for buying and selling digital collectibles".
In order to gain access to the titles, Animoca paid Atari the equivalent of 18.7 million shares at A$0.21 per share. This can be recuperted against royalties from the revenue that is generated by the games that Animoca has access to.
What do you think of this news? How do you think they will utilize blockchain in these games? Do you think it is odd, that you could be playing Missile Command, a game about the fears of nuclear annilhation, and earning in some way blockchain tokens? Let us know in the comments!
