New Atari Management As Company Increases Social, Mobile Push

Atari on Wednesday announced new senior management appointments that the company said would help it transition its focus to mobile and social gaming businesses. Robert Mattes will take the position of CFO at Atari; Owais Farooqui is the new SVP of digital publishing; and Maria Pacheco is now VP of mobile. In 2008, the company announced it would transition from a mainly core-focused packaged game publisher to an online games company, and later that year acquired Champions Online developer Cryptic. But now the company is aiming towards an even more "casual" audience on mobiles and social networks. Atari announced in May this year that it sold Cryptic -- also developer of Star Trek Online and creator of City of Heroes -- to online game publisher Perfect World. According to Atari, SVP Farooqui and VP Pacheco will head up a "cohesive mobile, social and online strategy for the company designed to best leverage Atari’s legendary gaming franchises for a new generation of gamers across online." Target platforms and outlets include Atari.com, web browsers, Facebook and Google+. Farooqui was previously with tournament games company King.com, while Pacheco was most recently VP of marketing for Vivendi Games Mobile. CFO Mattes has experience with microtransactions, a background that will be key in overseeing "free-to-play" models. Mattes previously was co-president and CFO of Authentic Response, a market research company. While Atari's focus is shifting to emerging markets and platforms, it had successful recent downloadable games in the form of Dungeons and Dragons: Daggerdale and The Witcher 2, the latter of which also appeared at physical retail. Atari also said that Atari's Greatest Hits hit the number one spot on the iTunes store, generating over 3 million downloads in its first three months.