Infogrames, parent company of Atari, has announced the purchase of Cryptic Studios, bringing the developers of the popular City of Heroes and City of Villains MMO games under the wing of Phil Harrison & Co.
Star Trek Online, the upcoming PC and Xbox 360 Champions Online and another unannounced game are all in development at Cryptic.
Atari will also receive access to Cryptic's proprietary development tools and server architecture, helping them usher in that nifty online gaming vision Harrison is always going on about.
Cryptic recently hired Bill Roper, former CEO of Flagship Studios, to serve as design director on Champions.
Though this move is consistent with Atari's goals, there's definitely quite a bit of risk involved. While Star Trek is a popular franchise, how well will it translate into the MMO space? And haven't we already tried the cross-platform thing with Shadowrun, and found it lacking? Is yet another MMO about superheroes and villains going to change all that?
Image courtesy Cryptic Studios
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