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Atari focusing on casual and sim games following Rollercoaster Tycoon success

"We’re clearly doing well with simulation games like Rollercoaster Tycoon," says CEO Chesnais

Atari focusing on casual and sim games following Rollercoaster Tycoon success

The current version of Atari is going to be focused on releasing simulation games in the wake of Rollercoaster Tycoon's launch and success.

That's according to CEO Fred Chesnais, who told VentureBeat that Citytopia was the company capitalising on the performance of the theme park title. Furthermore, the exec says that it will also be producing more casual games.

"We’re clearly doing well with simulation games like Rollercoaster Tycoon," he said.

"We decided to capitalise on that engine, which is why we’re doing Citytopia. Days of Doom is a survival game, but it has a lot of simulation elements. We’re definitely focusing on simulation games. The interest from the board is not for me to burn money making a shooter or a fantasy game at the moment. We have something in our hands that’s working, and we want to keep capitalizing on that.

"The second category is more the match-three games, the very casual games, like the Jonathan Cheban game. That’s our emphasis for the moment, simulation and casual games. After that, we’re making money with licensing. We’re making money in TV shows. What could be the third category — if we have success with a particular game or a TV show where we adapt a game, that’s a possibility. But we have a lot on our plates already. We have three more simulation games we’re looking at as far as allocating resources. These are games that require some investment for players, so players are tougher to get, but when you have them, they’re less likely to fall out of the game."

Rollercoaster Tycoon has sold in excess of 6.5m copies, with Atari renewing the license until 2022 last year


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PCGamesInsider Contributing Editor

Alex Calvin is a freelance journalist who writes about the business of games. He started out at UK trade paper MCV in 2013 and left as deputy editor over three years later. In June 2017, he joined Steel Media as the editor for new site PCGamesInsider.biz. In October 2019 he left this full-time position at the company but still contributes to the site on a daily basis. He has also written for GamesIndustry.biz, VGC, Games London, The Observer/Guardian and Esquire UK.