Gaming

97 Percent Ownership Cost Atari Its Turnaround Year

Atari's own games and hardware business turned its first operating profit in years, but a 97 percent stake in Thunderful dragged the group to a 4.8 million euro net loss. The decision lesson behind the numbers.

GamingBy Servola Tech Desk2026-08-054 min read

AI-assisted, edited by humans. | Editor-in-Chief: Leon Soliman | Editorial standards

97 Percent Ownership Cost Atari Its Turnaround Year

Key takeaways

Atari's own games and hardware business turned a 0.9 million euro operating profit in fiscal 2025-26, its first in several years, but the group logged a 6.7 million euro operating loss overall because Atari owns 97 percent of Thunderful, which lost 7.6 million euro on its own.
Consolidated revenue hit 56.0 million euro, the highest in more than a decade, up 66 percent year on year, but revenue growth and profitability stopped moving together the moment Atari became responsible for reporting a subsidiary's losses in full.
Games revenue grew 67.7 percent to 46.1 million euro and hardware revenue grew 83 percent to 7.3 million euro, so the core business is not the problem. The exposure from a majority stake in another company's balance sheet is.
CEO Wade Rosen called it operational profitability for the first time in several years, and he is right, but that phrase describes Atari's business minus Thunderful, a distinction worth checking before you sign off on any majority stake.
Before raising a stake in a partner past the 50 percent consolidation threshold, model that partner's worst realistic operating loss against your own best-case income for the same period. Atari's turnaround did not just get diluted by that math. It got erased on paper.

A CEO Says Profitable, The Balance Sheet Says Loss

Wade Rosen took over Atari in 2021, when the company was better known for licensing its own name than for shipping games. On 3 August 2026 he told investors that Atari's core business, games and hardware, had reached operational profitability for the first time in several years. Revenue for that core business grew 31 percent to 44.2 million euro, games revenue alone rose 67.7 percent to 46.1 million euro on a consolidated basis, and hardware revenue jumped 83 percent to 7.3 million euro. Operating income for Atari's own business came in at 0.9 million euro, against a 0.8 million euro loss the year before.

That is a real turnaround, and Rosen is right to say so. It is also not the number that shows up at the bottom of Atari's fiscal year 2025-26 results.

The 97 Percent Decision

Consolidated group revenue reached 56.0 million euro, up 66 percent year on year and the highest level Atari has posted in more than a decade. Below that line, the group reported a consolidated operating loss of 6.7 million euro and a net loss of 4.8 million euro. The gap between Rosen's profitable core business and the group's loss is one company: Thunderful Group, the Swedish publisher and developer whose catalogue Atari brought further under its roof by raising its ownership stake to 97 percent during the year. Thunderful alone posted a 7.6 million euro operating loss, more than enough to turn Atari's first profitable year in a decade into a group-wide net loss on paper.

Atari did not stumble into this. Building a 97 percent stake in Thunderful was a deliberate capital allocation choice, made the same year as two smaller, cleaner acquisitions: the 29.3 million dollar purchase of Hipster Whale, maker of Crossy Road, and the rights to five Ubisoft-owned titles including Child of Eden and Grow Home. Those two deals show Atari's underlying strategy is sound: buy proven, cash-generating games IP outright. Thunderful was a different kind of bet, a majority stake in another company's entire operating structure, including whatever losses that structure was already carrying.

Why Majority Ownership Changes What A Loss Means

Why it matters: a minority stake in a struggling partner shows up as a line item you can eventually walk away from. A 97 percent stake makes that partner's income statement your income statement, consolidated in full, every quarter, whether or not you control the day-to-day decisions that caused the loss. Atari now carries essentially all of Thunderful's downside with none of the option to simply leave it off the group's own results.

Yes, but: staying a minority investor would have left Atari with less say over a publisher whose catalogue it may want folded into its own IP strategy over time. Full ownership was not automatically the wrong call. It was a bet that Thunderful's operating loss would shrink faster than Atari's own business grew, and that bet has not paid off yet.

The bottom line: fiscal year 2025-26 is really two stories stacked on top of each other, a genuine operational recovery at Atari and an unresolved integration cost at Thunderful, and only one of those two stories was inside management's control on a quarterly basis.

The Instruction For Anyone Weighing A Majority Stake

If you are weighing raising your stake in a struggling partner or supplier past the 50 percent consolidation threshold, run the arithmetic before the deal closes, not after the next results call. Model the partner's worst realistic operating loss against your own best-case operating income for the same period, then ask whether your own numbers can absorb that loss and still read as progress to your board, your lenders, or your own conscience. Atari's core business had its best year in a decade. Because of an ownership decision made the year before, almost nobody outside the earnings call will remember that; they will remember the net loss.

Frequently asked questions

Did Atari lose money in fiscal year 2025-26?

At the consolidated group level, yes: a net loss of 4.8 million euro on revenue of 56.0 million euro. Atari's own games and hardware business, excluding Thunderful, was profitable, with a 0.9 million euro operating income.

What is Thunderful Group and why does it affect Atari's results?

Thunderful is a Swedish video game publisher and developer. Atari raised its ownership stake to 97 percent during fiscal year 2025-26, which means Thunderful's 7.6 million euro operating loss is now consolidated into Atari's own results in full.

Does this mean Atari's turnaround is not real?

No. Games revenue grew 67.7 percent and hardware revenue grew 83 percent, and Atari's own business is genuinely profitable for the first time in several years. The group net loss reflects an ownership decision about Thunderful, not a weakness in Atari's core games business.

Revenue growth proves a business works. Consolidated ownership decides who reports the cost of the parts that do not, and that choice gets made once, long before the numbers do.

AtariThunderful GroupWade RosenGaming industryMergers and acquisitions

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