Lyon, France, May 7 (Bloomberg) -- Infogrames Entertainment
SA, Europe's biggest video-game maker, said it changed its brand
name to Atari to help boost its profile in the U.S. The shares
jumped as much as 28 percent.
The company's U.S. unit is renamed Atari Inc. and will trade
on the Nasdaq stock exchange, Infogrames said in a statement on
Business newswire.
Lyon, France-based Infogrames gained the rights to the name
Atari, a pioneer of computer games, after it bought Hasbro Inc.'s
interactive unit for $100 million in December 2000. It said it is
already using the brand name Atari for video games such as ``Enter
The Matrix,'' scheduled to be released on May 15 along with the
movie ``The Matrix Reloaded.''
Shares of the company today jumped as much as 1.52 euros to
6.98 euros and traded at 6 euros as of 4:26 p.m. in Paris. The
stock, down 79 percent in 2002, has more than doubled in the past
two months on expectations the Matrix game will boost revenue.
Atari Corp., maker of games including ``Pong,''
``Centipede,'' and ``Breakout,'' had been hurt by competition from
Japanese rivals such as Nintendo Corp. Hasbro bought it in 1998.