Phil Harrison No Longer Atari President

Phil Harrison will step down from his position as president of Atari as the company shifts its operations to the US, though he will remain part of the Atari board of directors.

A little over a year after Infogrames announced his appointment as president of Atari, Phil Harrison is stepping down from the position. This isn’t because the former Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios head and official Dr. Manhattan of the games industry was doing a bad job, but because Atari has shifted the focus of its business to the US while Namco-Bandai and Sony handle its European operations.

Harrison will take on a non-executive role as a member of the board of directors. “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,” Atari said. “As all board members, he will continue to assist, support and guide the company’s strategy.”

Nevertheless the idea of a more general “company strategy” job must come as something of a disappointment to Harrison, who had hoped to play a central role in guiding the struggling company to “create amazing network games and community experiences for players the world over.”

Infogrames recently reported a net loss of $319.33 million for the fiscal year that ended in March, an increase from the $72.7 million loss from last year. The increase comes as a result of the dramatic structural changes the company underwent, as well as “losses from discontinued operations due to the exit of its distribution business in Europe and Asia.”