Atari acquires longtime rival Intellivision

Imagine if Nintendo woke up one day and decided to buy Sega — that’s essentially what’s happened today as Atari has announced it has acquired Intellivision, ending one of the longest company rivalries in the video game industry. According to the announcement, Atari will take over the Intellivision brand and over 200 games from its library.

“Atari will seek to expand digital and physical distribution of legacy Intellivision games, potentially create new games, and explore brand and licensing opportunities,” Atari wrote in the press release.

Interestingly, though, this deal doesn’t include the Intellivision Amico. Atari stated that Intellivision would rebrand itself and continue to work on developing the console project that was originally scheduled to launch in 2020 and was once headed up by “prolific” video game composer Tommy Tallarico. Atari said that the company formerly known as Intellivision would rebrand itself and that it would grant licensing rights to the new company permitting it to feature Intellivision games on the console.

“We look forward to our expanded collaboration and the prospect of bringing a broad array of new titles to the Amico family gaming platform,” said Intellivision CEO Phil Adam in the press release.

Atari and Intellivision competed against each other with their dueling Atari 2600 and Intellivision home consoles. Developed by Mattel Electronics and introduced in 1979, the Intellivision sold roughly 5 million units by 1990. Atari has established itself as a retro gaming-focused company, relaunching mini versions of its consoles, supporting the rerelease of its games on modern consoles, acquiring retro gaming developers like Digital Eclipse, and now buying its retro gaming peer.