Atari is known for being one of the early home gaming brands with classics such as Pong and Space Invaders. Since the 2000s the company has been losing steam and went bankrupt due to failing to adapt to modern gaming. Atari wants to get a head start on the metaverse trend in hopes of turning itself around to what it once was. There have been some strong moves Atari made around metaverse gaming and also some poor moves.
One strong move Atari has made is taking a large stake of land in the Sandbox Metaverse. Since the hype of metaverse related items took off over the past year, Atari has positioned itself well in the amount of Sandbox metaverse land owned.
Another positive for Atari is the brand identity itself. Atari seems be bargaining well to partner with a few well known crypto gaming related projects. Some of the projects Atari is partnered with include Sandbox, Decentraland, and Enjin. Atari is also a shareholder of Animoca Brands, a leading crypto gaming investing group for early projects.
Having easy access to the project token is another major benefit to Atari too. The Atari token can be bought on a number of blockchains such as Ethereum, Binance, Polygon, and Fantom.
On the otherhand there are some poor moves Atari has as they enter the metaverse industry.
One lagging aspect of Atari is their speed of development and communication. Since Atari is an established company with shareholders, the direction of the company is largely decided by the board members. Most of the Atari developments related to its metaverse plan are announced in press releases that come quarterly.
I found that the Atari token discord is lackluster with no official chat moderators. The lack of community active chats compared to other crypto projects is a major setback. Although Atari is trustworthy and has a low chance of being a rugpull, their traditional business methods come at a cost of speed and transparency.
Another negative seems to be the focus on metaverse experiences and gambling. The gambling focus is a low lying fruit in the metaverse and is evident by Atari's plan for casinos in Decentraland. There could be more potential if Atari announced their classic games being part of a crypto arcade with earnable NFT's.
The reliance of the metaverse becoming a success is another downside of Atari. This move seems more of a bet and speculation of a future technology that could not pan out as expected and Atari would be left behind again.
In summary Atari holds a large piece of valuable sandbox land to use, has strong a brand identity for trust, and built a token across multiple blockchains for easy access. On the other hand Atari lacks in communication and development speed. Atari is also trying to profit early on easy crypto gaming projects such as gambling and metaverse hype.