Management over at Atari continues to change as it re-positions itself as a mobile and casual games publisher. In the latest move, Atari has added a new senior vice president of digital publishing, Owais Farooqui, and has pegged Maria Pacheco as its vice president of mobile. Farooqui was previously with a tournament games company, King.com. Pacheco, on the other hand, last served Vivendi Games Mobile, which apparently existed at one point. The company apparently also has a new CFO: Robert Mattes, a former CFO of a market research company called Authentic Response.
In a press release announcing these moves, its stressed that these three will be behind a new mobile, social and online initiative that uses the company’s old-school properties for gain in the social and mobile space. I guess we’ll see the first fruits of this change a little later this fall with the release of Dungeons & Dragons: Heroes of Neverwinter for Facebook, but the company has already been dabbling on the mega-popular platform with Asteroids Online and Fairies vs. Darklings.
Atari attempted to make the switch to digital distribution a couple of years ago, and I don’t think many would say that it’s been working out too well for the publisher. It’ll be interesting to see if the casual, mobile, and social universes are kinder to the once-boxed retail competitor, especially with this new cast.
