Atari has announced that it’s working with Cryptic Studios on an online co-op RPG based on the Neverwinter Nights franchise. The game will simply be called “Neverwinter”, and will be released in 2011. The story and campaign will be based on an upcoming novel by R.A. Salvatore, which explores the Neverwinter universe. The game should be the much rumored “MMO” that Cryptic has been working on since 2008.

The struggling developer/publisher Atari has seen three different CEOs in the last three years, and now that count has increased to four, as the company today appointed COO Jeff Lapin to the post of CEO, while the previous CEO, David Gardner, has been relegated to the board of directors.

Atari is betting a lot of money and effort on the upcoming Star Trek online, an MMO based on the popular Star Trek brand, a game which will be our early next year.

Lil Wayne is a Grammy award winning rapper who sold over 1 million copies of Tha Carter III in its first week on store shelves. However, when he’s not busy making music, he’s apparantly an avid gamer. But he isn’t just any kind of gamer instead he is a gamer with an Xbox that plays “every game from A-Z, Atari, Nintendo, pong, movies and even porn”.

But wait, why doesn’t my Xbox 360 do that? Well, the only way this is possible is if Mr. Carter has a modded Xbox. Sure, mark it off as convenience but you would think a guy with that kind of money could afford to buy his games rather than have them all stored on one console.

via joystiq

If you were a fan of Atari’s Xbox 360, PS3 and PS2 Ghostbusters: The Video Game release and happen to own a PSP, you will be happy to hear that Atari has today released the above trailer for a portable version of the game.

As you can see from the trailer, just because it’s on the PSP doesn’t mean that the developers will be skimping on visuals or gameplay as it looks like it is packed with it.

Atari says Ghostbusters PSP will be out in November of this year. Anyone else as excited as I am?

Atari’s RPG The Witcher: Enhanced Edition Director’s Cut has shipped today to North American retailers. It’s basically the same thing as the original Enhanced Edition released one year ago, except without the nudity censorship made for the US release. Any Europeans who are planning to import have no need to do so.

A patch enables this nudity for all you perverts out there, so it’s you can have had all along in the first place.

The patch is at around ~300MB and can be downloaded from GamersHell.

It seems that Nolan Bushnell, the mastermind behind Pong and Atari, is returning to the game scene with his latest title, Battleswarm: Field of Honor.

Bushnell describes this game as a mash-up between StarCraft and Starship Troopers in which players will choose between playing the game as an RTS or an FPS.

Below are his comments on the game attributing its creation to wanting to game with his 5 sons:

They’re all avid gamers and like first-person shooters. The problem is, as you get older, you lose some reaction time, and as a result, I’m getting slaughtered by them. A real-time strategy [RTS] game, however, is more my [preference], a good resource game is what I love. Battleswarm is both an RTS and a shooter, a mash-up between StarCraft and Starship Troopers, if you will. You can switch sides, too, if you feel like an RTS instead of a shooter, or vice-versa.

Sounds pretty awesome, can we get a release date?

Read (USA Today)

Yes, it’s yet another in a long, long, LONG series of racing games currently available for the Xbox 360.  This time, we’re talking about Race Pro, a game that breathlessly promises to be “the ultimate racing simulation experience”, and I’m sure that is the case on planets where no one has discovered driving, video games, the internal combustion engine or the wheel.

That’s the thrust of the review today, folks–this IS in fact the ultimate racing simulation experience if you’ve either never actually had a racing simulation experience before or you’ve never actually driven anything before.

Basically, the plot of the game, such as it is, is exactly that. You’re going to drive cars.  No, this doesn’t exactly have the same literary quality of Ridge Racer’s young up-and-comer looking to burn his way through the ranks of the professional driving circuit, or the various underground racers where you’re out to gather pinks and impress hot chicks who like to wave flags half-naked for little or no conceivable reason.  You’re just here to go fast and turn left, except for when, on occasion, you will be called upon to turn RIGHT.

You may be asking yourself at this point, hey, if that’s all I’m supposed to do, then why even bother?  I mean, if I wanted to be stuck in traffic for twenty minutes while I tried to drive a car down a twisty, windy track, then why don’t I just jump in my car and actually, you know, go somewhere?  At least then everybody on the Internet’ll stop calling me a basement dweller because I haven’t left the house in months.

Sadly, I don’t have much of an answer for that.  Oh, sure, with Race Pro you’ll get to try out various different kinds of cars, on various different types of tracks, with various different types of options.  I give Race Pro due credit for having an almost OBSCENE number of options–not only can you tweak the difficulty, you can also tweak subclasses of the difficulty as well.  For instance, if you’re racing on hard mode and find the AI’s just a little TOO aggressive with the competing drivers, you can actually dial down the racers’ AI difficulty level.  It’s an absolutely customizable racing experience.

Absolutely customizable, yes…but worthwhile?  That’s where I’m going to have to say no.  I had SERIOUS problems with the controls on this one–even something that should be video-game simple, the drift maneuver, I couldn’t manage to pull off.  In fact, driving the Mini Cooper in the first level felt exactly like the headline described, like driving a brick through wet cement.  I remember trying to pull off a turn, so naturally, I decelerate so I can jam on the gas after I’ve started to pitch my nose a bit.  The car promptly decides that it prefers going straight, and thusly goes COMPLETELY OFF THE TRACK and into the dirt.  The game then warns me that I’m “cutting track”, to which I respond with a torrent of obscenities detailing the fact that, one, I already KNOW I’m off the track and, two, that I wouldn’t have been if the game had done what it was told to do in the first place.

This is, of course, profoundly irritating, but there’s probably a workaround if you’re desperate enough for a new racing game to try.  I personally say that there are better racing games out there–vastly better, in fact–but if you want a driving sim that’ll give you a huge fight, then Race Pro is the game you want.

Formally owned by Atari, Dragon Ball has returned to it’s original publisher, Namco Bandai. This is unfortunate for Atari especially considering their current financial situation.

Bandai says that they will have exclusive rights to the Dragon Ball license 5 years beginning in January 2010. Additionally, they will publish the upcoming titles, Dragon Ball: Revenge of King Piccolo, Dragon Ball Z: Attack of the Saiyans and Dragon Ball: Raging Blast.

Does Atari losing one of it’s biggest franchises mark the end for the aging company? I guess we’ll find out.

Hollywood trade magazine Variety reports that Neverwinter Nights developer Cryptic Studios is developing an MMO based on the Neverwinter Nights universe. The report also suggests that Atari’s main intention with the acquisition of the studio was the MMO, which Atari is putting all its bets on. No other details of the game were mentioned, other than that a 2011 release date was expected.

Infogrames today announced that Phil Harrison is no longer the president of the company.

“Because of a shift of business operations to the US, Phil Harrison will move from the role of President to that of non-executive Director of the Group. As all Board members, he will continue to assist, support and guide the Company’s strategy.”

Harrison will still be actively engaged in the decision making process of the company. Infogrames has appointed board member Jeff Lapin to the CEO position.

Read (Kombo)