Atari fights to keep Dragon Ball Z

Sebastian (SB) · Post by **Sebastian (SB)** » Wed Oct 31, 2007 4:58 pm

Gamespot wrote:It's been a rough month for Atari, starting with the dismissal of five members of its board of directors, courtesy of parent company Infogrames. While the outgoing directors had been replaced within a week, a group of frustrated Atari shareholders accused Infogrames of intentionally undermining the company's stock price in preparation to buy out the remaining shareholders.

The month is ending with even more corporate drama for the company, as an Atari Securities and Exchange Commission filing last week revealed that it is currently embroiled in a dispute over its Dragon Ball Z license.

According to Atari, the company has the rights to release games based on the series thanks to a pair of agreements with US anime firm FUNimation Productions. However, the publisher received a notice from FUNimation earlier this month accusing it of breaching those agreements.

As a result, FUNimation now claims that Atari's license to make Dragon Ball Z games has been terminated. Atari doesn't agree and has been distributing the games as usual. The two companies are now in talks to reach a temporary agreement that would buy them time to resolve their issues regarding the original license.

Dragon Ball Z has been Atari's most prolific licensed property in recent years, bringing in $85 million in the company's fiscal 2005, according to its latest annual report. The remainder of Atari's current catalog is headlined by properties like Dungeons & Dragons, Backyard Sports, and Godzilla. Should Atari lose the Dragon Ball Z license, it would join Driver, Stuntman, Transformers, and a handful of Hasbro games like Monopoly as high-profile losses to the publisher's stable of properties.

Here's the Source

I know EX brought this up in his page recently, but now some actual news is developing regarding the Dragon Ball license.

Maphisto86 · Post by **Maphisto86** » Thu Nov 01, 2007 12:23 am

Wow... hmmm. I'll have to ponder this one. I mean Atari hasn't always been the best North American producer of Dragonball games (at least in my opinion). I mean we don't get the original music and the covers... then again I don't know if they are really the ones responsible but I'm geussing so. I also cannot say I will miss Donny Clay.

Then again we could also do worse... but I digress, Atari hasen't lost the franchise license and may very well keep it. I wonder what agreements where breached that Funimation would get up in arms about. I'm just hoping that Sparking METEOR (Budokai Tenkaichi 3) is not delayed or cancelled.

gohanku · Post by **gohanku** » Thu Nov 01, 2007 10:45 am

Okay, so now with major dispute with the NA companies, I really hope that Atari wins this one. I really don't want another company to come along and ruin the DBZ gaming industry.

Hao_Kaiser · Post by **Hao_Kaiser** » Thu Nov 01, 2007 10:38 pm

Maybe I'm the only one, but I'd like to see Ubisoft get the license.

I mean, they've (apparently) done a really good job with their Naruto game, and, I know they made that from the ground up, but, to me, that says that they could easily bring over games from Japan.

Sebastian (SB) · Post by **Sebastian (SB)** » Fri Nov 02, 2007 12:15 am

To be honest, I don't care which publishing company gets it as long as I have the Japanese voices & music.

Smooth Criminal · Post by **Smooth Criminal** » Fri Nov 02, 2007 2:20 am

Sebastian (SB) wrote:To be honest, I don't care which publishing company gets it as long as I have the Japanese voices & music.

It's a little more complicated than that.

If Atari loses it's license, a lot of these titles are going to stay in limbo, for a long, long while if not indefinitely. Having "Japanese voices & music" should be the least of your concerns, presently.

Sebastian (SB) · Post by **Sebastian (SB)** » Fri Nov 02, 2007 9:22 pm

Nah, with Dragon Ball Z being such a huge video game franchise in the US, I highly doubt it'll stay in limbo for a long time. Don't forget that Bandai Namco has its subsidiary in the States now with publishing the Naruto, Soul Calibur, & other whatnot games, so I'm pretty sure they'll pick it up.

Strongbad456 · Post by **Strongbad456** » Fri Nov 02, 2007 10:08 pm

Bandai or any other company getting the license to future DBZ games might be a very bad thing. I'm pretty sure Bandai never(Or barely) gives the Japanese voices in games(Like the Naruto games). If they got the license we'd probably only have the English voices. I don't have a problem with them but I'd rather play with the Japanese voices. Bandai might gives us the Japanese music though. So it'd probably be:

Atari: Japanese and English voices, New Music.

Bandai: English voices only, Japanese Anime Music.

That's what I'm thinking. I don't believe we'll ever get both the JP voices and JP anime music.

SSJmole · Post by **SSJmole** » Fri Nov 02, 2007 10:31 pm

If a new company e.g Midway (not saying they will but was trying to think of a fighting game and i thought Mortal Kombat as we already had a street fighter one) Got the rights could they create their own DBZ games?

I was just thinking maybe we would get a cool new fighting game , maybe an rpg , a beat 'em up like Sagas but good.

I know Japanese voices and music are important to a lot of people. Me however I don't care , It's nice to have them in but all I care about is gameplay.

I might be looking at this wrong but it could be a blessing in disguise. Instead of the same game every year with a few new people and features. We could get something like Legacy of Goku with 360 graphics.

Post by **VegettoEX** » Fri Nov 02, 2007 10:33 pm

Just a heads-up... we went into pretty interesting detail with a lot of this in Episode #0101 of the podcast... so look forward to that... I'd say more, but I just spoke it aloud, I'm editing myself saying it, and I don't feel like typing it all out

.

tinlunlau · Post by **tinlunlau** » Sat Nov 03, 2007 1:26 am

I hope Bandai-Namco gets distribution rights because they're the ones who make the games. Why share the love with other companies when they have enough manpower to distribute it themselves?

Ex-Dubbie369 · Post by **Ex-Dubbie369** » Sat Nov 03, 2007 1:32 am

tinlunlau wrote:I hope Bandai-Namco gets distribution rights because they're the ones who make the games. Why share the love with other companies when they have enough manpower to distribute it themselves?

I totally agree with this. Why doesn't Bandai just distribute the games out here, just like they do in Japan? They've distributed other games themselves in the U.S. and other areas (such as the multitude of Gundam games), so why not Dragon Ball?

SSJmole · Post by **SSJmole** » Sat Nov 03, 2007 1:52 am

Ex-Dubbie369 wrote:I totally agree with this. Why doesn't Bandai just distribute the games out here, just like they do in Japan? They've distributed other games themselves in the U.S. and other areas (such as the multitude of Gundam games), so why not Dragon Ball?

Well since the funanimation dispute that is going on now I assume this : They would need to get the rights off funanimation for U.S.A as they own the rights to all u.s.a related dragonball Z distribution.

Based on this we need to assume that in order to get the rights from funanimation that funanimation would need to buy the rights. Buying two sets of rights for one game would be bad business.

So when a third party i.e Atari steps in Atari buy the funanimation rights BUT they also buy/pay Bandai for their game. So Bandai does not need to buy the rights to u.s.a just let their 3rd party do this.

This is just a guess , maybe wrong but this is what I assumed.

Sasuke_Chidori · Post by **Sasuke_Chidori** » Sat Nov 03, 2007 1:19 pm

If Atari looses the rights to DBZ, I hope they go to Bandai Namco. I wouldn't want it any other way. Bandai is a pretty good with translating imports, ect.

NeptuneKai · Post by **NeptuneKai** » Sun Nov 04, 2007 12:09 pm

Even if Atari looses the license I'm sure whoever attains the rights next won't screw it up too bad. It will probably be more of the same only with a different logo next time you turn on the newest Sparking game.

NECPS · Post by **NECPS** » Sun Nov 04, 2007 12:48 pm

Even if Atari looses the license I'm sure whoever attains the rights next won't screw it up too bad. It will probably be more of the same only with a different logo next time you turn on the newest Sparking game.

I only hope it won´t be a sparking game..

Maphisto86 · Post by **Maphisto86** » Mon Nov 05, 2007 10:43 am

NECPS wrote:
Even if Atari looses the license I'm sure whoever attains the rights next won't screw it up too bad. It will probably be more of the same only with a different logo next time you turn on the newest Sparking game.
I only hope it won´t be a sparking game..

Heh, it probably will not be a Sparking! game. It seems that these games come in threes. Most likely it will be a successor title... though I am curious about who will make the next three and what type of gameplay we can expect.

On topic... I agree with Mike, Meri & Julian's take on the recent podcast. The dispute between Atari and FUNImation over distribution rights probably has to do with Atari's financial status. If FUNImation is not confident in Atari's viability then it will try to axe the deal. This reminds me of the contract dispute between Activision and Paramount over the Star Trek gaming license.

Corporate drama is not that entertaining...

Blade · Post by **Blade** » Mon Nov 05, 2007 1:32 pm

I have a great deal of respect for Atari, period.

When I first got into the Dragonball Franchise 7 or so years ago I never imagined having such an array of Dragonball games at my disposal like I do now. Sure, some of them have sucked - but I was living off an import of Final Bout back then.

Still - nothing tops "Dragonball Z:Legends" in my books though, that game is always gonna rule

JohnnyBoy_Z · Post by **JohnnyBoy_Z** » Mon Nov 05, 2007 9:13 pm

Good news. I guess they finally realised how crappy all these recent DBZ fighters have been. Here's hoping Capcom gets the licensed.

Then maybe we'll get to see some good qualilty Dragon Ball fighters.

SonEric84 · Post by **SonEric84** » Mon Nov 05, 2007 11:41 pm

JohnnyBoy_Z wrote:Good news. I guess they finally realised how crappy all these recent DBZ fighters have been. Here's hoping Capcom gets the licensed. Then maybe we'll get to see some good qualilty Dragon Ball fighters.

I've always hoped for Dragon Ball VS. SF/Capcom...I even had a dream about it once.