Due to the recent events of Cryptic Studios pretty much keeping Atari afloat with its prosperity, NoobFeed decided to release an interview with Cryptic that was done in December. This should give some insight as to why Atari’s online revenues were up 493.5 percent to €18.4 million ($25 million), whilst their retail sales slipped 74.7 percent to €22.6 million ($30.7 million).
The online success was largely credited due to Star Trek Online and Champions online; the latter of which boasts an amazing 1000% user activity increase, since going free-to-play!
In the interview, Chief of Operations Jack Emmert revealed that Cryptic Studios in the end decided going against the production of their adventure game, Lost Worlds; claiming: “It was a modern day, action adventure along the lines of Indiana Jones. We decided against it for a variety of reasons. Mostly, the publisher we were working with decided against the game. We also had run into the issue of how to make the game last. Once you’re Indiana Jones – how do you evolve from there?”
More surprisingly even, all this success might never have happened, as Cryptic Studios was on shaky grounds for a while, due to their problems with Marvel. Emmert stated: “It was dreadful – almost drove us out of business. We suddenly had 100+ people with no development deal! There was a lot of traveling for me and many sleepless nights.”
For a complete vision of Cryptic Studios and their thoughts on their franchises and the industry, please view the full interview here.
