Atari CEO Wants the Company to Become the Best Retro Brand

Atari’s CEO is offering insight into how he views the business and the slow, steady approach he plans to take to build the brand’s resurgence.

Atari is probably the brand most associated with the first in-home gaming boom. However, it is also associated with the rapid burnout of the video game industry in the United States before the release of the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1985. Over the years, Atari’s mission has changed. They’ve tried retro consoles, retro gaming collections, a new-age console, and much more. Now, the CEO is speaking out about his recent approach, being a little more selective with the brand’s choices, and banking everything on a retro revival.

Atari Wants to Make a Good Bubsy Game for the First Time

Wade Rosen is 41. That puts him at the right age to understand what the Atari brand means in the history of gaming, and he hopes to make the company the best retro brand in the world. Speaking with Jason Schreier of Bloomberg, he called the brand’s various failures a learning experience. He also said he wants people’s lives to be better because Atari is in it, and he’s not in the business of just flipping it to another owner.

“We obviously care about the value of the company and want it to be successful. But the goal is not to make this into something and sell it. The goal is to revitalize Atari and have it be a company that exists in the world and makes people’s lives better because it exists in the world. Like, my life is better because Nintendo is in the world.”

Speaking about the success the Atari brand has had with the Bubsy IP, he said he wants to be the first to make a good Bubsy game with the upcoming Bubsy 4D and noted that putting their faith in a proven development team like Fabraz will help mitigate the risk of making a Bubsy game in 2026.

“You find a team that’s firing on all cylinders and already delivering a really good game in that genre,” Rosen said. “I think that ultimately is what helps de-risk those projects.”

Bubsy 4D will release on Steam on May 22. Insider Gaming will continue to monitor the story and report any updates as more information becomes available.

Sound off about this story and all others in our official Discord server. Also, don’t forget to sign up for our weekly newsletter.