Atari’s brand awareness is weak among young gamers

Older gamers have fond childhood memories of playing Atari video games. But the landscape has changed dramatically in the past few decades, and now the brand appears to be weak among young gamers.

Nolan Bushnell, the legendary Atari founder who rejoined the Atari board recently, believes it is strong. But a survey conducted by E-Poll shows that Atari’s overall brand awareness isn’t very good. Atari will have to deal with a big brand revival campaign if it wants to move beyond classic arcade games.  Industry Gamers has more. Atari is still launching big games such as Star Trek Online. Bushnell, who is known as the father of video games, rejoined the company as part of its quest to regain its lost mojo.

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.