Kotaku
Neverwinter Nights fans rejoice! Atari parent company Infogrames and Hasbro signed a new agreement that extends property rights for the Dungeons & Dragons universe for ten more years, up until the year 2017. Atari has been doing a lovely job with Neverwinter Nights as well as the Baldur's Gate series, crafting some of the best D&D video games since the glory days of the SSI gold box titles. The agreement also sees Hasbro buying back the rights to several of their popular board games, including Scrabble, Risk, Battleship, Boggle, and Simon...perhaps fearing Atari would pull a Jenga on them.
The rights to said games were originally transferred back in 2001 when Infogrames purchased Hasbro Interactive, which gave them MicroProse, Games.com, and the Atari name in the first place. So basically Hasbro is buying back rights they sold in a package deal six years ago.
I am wondering if this means the Hasbro buyback titles will all be disappearing from Games.com now and possibly moved over to the new Gleemax strategy gaming site recently launched by the Hasbro-owned Wizards of the Coast. Would certainly be a sound strategy for raising awareness of the fledgling gaming portal. We'll just have to wait and see.
New Strategic Agreement With Hasbro Concerning The Dungeons & Dragons Franchise
DIGITAL GAMING RIGHTS TO BE SOLD BACK TO HASBRO FOR 19.5 MILLION US DOLLARS
Lyon, France, July 18, 2007 - As part of the relaunch strategy announced by the Group on June 21 and the Group's plan to focus its investment on major franchises with significant potential, Infogrames Entertainment SA (Euronext 5257) today announced the signing of a new agreement with Hasbro concerning:
- the extension until 2017 of the exploitation of the intellectual property rights to the Dungeons & Dragons universe, under an exclusive license covering all interactive formats, including online and wireless.
The agreement covers all current and future products that are part of this universe, including NeverWinter Nights, Baldur's Gate, etc.
Two new games have already been announced for fiscal 2007-2008: NeverWinter Nights 2 Expansion Pack for PC and Dungeons & Dragons Tactics for PSP.
- the purchase by Hasbro of digital gaming rights (online and wireless) to nine franchises (Monopoly, Scrabble, Risk, Game of Life, Clue, Yahtzee, Battleship, Boggle and Simon), for 19.5 million dollars (*). This sale will have no significant impact on revenue for the current fiscal year.
"This agreement represents a reaffirmation of our partnership with Hasbro. It is an important step in our business strategy that will allow us to keep and strengthen a franchise with significant potential, while giving the Group additional resources to invest in the relaunch of its publishing business. Dungeons & Dragons is one of the Group's historic intellectual properties on which we plan to expand our business, relying on one of the largest and most active gamer communities in the world of video games," commented Patrick Leleu, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer.
(*) of which, 4 million dollars shall be paid to Atari Inc
Comments
Really looking forward to D&D Tactics
> Atari has been doing a lovely job with Neverwinter Nights as well as the Baldur's Gate series
...You mean BioWare, right?
@PMAvers:
Who is now sick and tired of D&D, and will probably never do one again.
@PMAvers: Don't you know that publishing is half the battle?
@PMAvers:
They chose to let Bioware use their properties. It is like Bioware and LucasArts with KoTOR.
Let us look at the recent DnD games that have came out:
Neverwinter nights 2: not great
DnD Online: not great
Dragonshard: RTS based on DnD license. Good but not an RPG
Demon Stone: not an RPG
Temple of Elemental evil: terrible RPG. Has less story than most FPS. Perhaps the best rendition of DnD rules 3rd edition though.
It looks like the last good RPG based on Dnd was Neverwinter Nights, and even then, it was nowhere as good as the Baldur's Gate series.
I was hoping that someone else would buy the DnD license. Atari has been dropping the ball with it for years now.
Gee, and here I was under the impression that the Baldur's Gate games were published by Interplay.
@Thriceborn: If you don't like Temple of Elemental Evil, blame Gary Gygax. Actually the pc version has a lot more added plot than the original module.
@LORDofDANCE: Atari chose to let them use it for NWN. But the Baldur's Gate series was under Interplay's aegis.
I wonder what Turbine has to say about all of this.
What Oyn said. Temple of Elemental Evil was an excellent representation of the source matieral, and with a lot more personality and character interaction (which, admitedly, Gygax expected individual DMs to add).
Temple of Elemental Evil wasn't a bad game for it's design or plot, it was a bad game due to it's many, MANY game-killing bugs. Like NWN, it has a dedicated fan following who've expanded on the engine to create their own content.
NWN2 took NWN and then took several steps backwards while creating a prettier engine. However, there is still good user-created content coming out for it regularly.
If you want to play D&D, buy the books or go to the d20 System Reference Document for free. If you want to play it online, go get OpenRPG.
I shouldn't say anything about this, but I think it's bad for D&D for Atari to continue to be the publisher. Don't mind me. Maybe they won't force the next developer to make the game in half the time it should take. ^^
NWN fanboy here, loved the original, hated the second. A game that required so much graphics power and still looked like crap was not a worthwhile purchase.
I was pissed that I pre-ordered, in the hopes that it would be like the original NWN, but nope, they adopted a few of the WoW formulas, turned their back on everything Bioware created for NWN and royally screwed up the franchise.
Atari, is not really at fault here, but they do need to stop worrying about how fast a game will come out and let the developers do what they do best and make a great game without having a giant black dragon looming over their heads and breathing fire everytime a delay happens.
So long as Obsidian is never allowed to touch the NWN's franchise again I will be happy. Let Bioware take it back or let the Baldur's Gate creators pick the reigns back up and lead it into a new era.
@monkhino: You do realize that Obsidian is made up of ex-Black Isle folks, right?
And it's not like Feargus and co. are unexperienced in making D&D RPGs, they made Icewind Dale, the godly Planescape: Torment and co-produced the Baldur's Gate series with BioWare.
I really thought it wasn't bad, yeah the toolset was a little sluggish, but the single player was pretty good, and the player made campaigns are turning out to be excellent. You should try the first part of the Pool of Radiance remake, and look into Purgatorio.
@Keldan:
Thanks, man. It's rare you hear people taking up for Obsidian on forums these days. They did the best they could with the scheduling. They really are some stand-up guys there.
Atari/Infogrames had NOTHING to do with the Baldur's Gate series and Neverwinter Nights (1). Those were Interplay titles.
Now it's true Atari PUBLISHED NWN(1), but that's because Interplay got into financial trouble (eventually leading them to go out of business) and Infogrames picked up the D&D license almost when NWN was done being developed. Interplay owed BioWare a lot of money for the Baldur's Gates series and that could have put an end to NWN if it hadn't been for Atari.
If anything, Atari is responsible for pushing back the D&D brand by a lot of lackluster titles and letting the Black Isle ex-Interplay flunkies anywhere near Neverwinter Nights. Black Isle's hack & slash approach to using other people's engine (hello Icewind Dale) should have altered people that KOTOR2 and NWN2 weren't going to deliver the stake and potatos that the Bioware originals came with.
Personally I thought NWN2 was fine except for the bugginess in the beginning. DND Online was a pile, along with Dragonshard, but my opinion of the Eberron world isn't very high. ToEE was very buggy and wasn't even all that playable unless you download the Circle of Nine patches that make the game playable.
Side note, who did the Pools of Radiance game that was practically unplayable?
/sigh, must stop buying crappy D&D games...
D&D Shadow over Mystara > Other D&D games.
But that is because Capcom is better than Atari of course.
Would love to hear that another site is going to take over what Atari had such as yahtzee...they just with no notice came and deleted the game from underneath our nose overnight. I am disabled and homebound, played on that site for almost 7 yrs so it became my home. Woke up one morning and poof my home was just GONE! It would be a great relief to just even know who is taking if over or where it is going to be moved to, just to know my home is going to return.. So if I person is needed to test these I would be candidate for that now that I have nothing more to do beside stare at my screen hoping to hear some news on the game relocating..thank you for your time!
It was a business decision to just buy back the rights to artari, however on more professional level, everyone should of been informed, instead of waking up one day finding that the site has been changed. I'm confident that another site will be taking over yahtzee, even if there is a fee, which I believe that is what it all comes down to, money. The game is very popular, interactive, real people want to know what happened. At least have the common courtesy to let us know what is going to go on with yahtzee?
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