Namco and Activision, two big contributors to Atari's success in the early days, are still going strong. Even with the video game crash of the early 80s, the death of the arcade (at least in the US), and the rise of home consoles a lot of good ideas and companies survived that period of transition.

I don't so much miss Atari as a brand, but I certainly miss the days when Atari, Commodore/Amiga, Microsoft, Apple and IBM were all duking it out for the betterment of consumers of personal computers. I remember my Atari 1040ST had built-in MIDI ports and that period was when powerful apps such as Cubase got their start. Amiga of course was renowned for Video Toaster. It's disappointing that those old challengers have disappeared, they encouraged a competition of ideas I think we've lost. It really sucks that competition has shrunk to Microsoft and Apple, for the majority of computer users, they've practically agreed to keep things stagnant so they never have to try too hard. I'm not knocking *nix at all, but they don't really have the economic/cultural penetration to really shake things up, trust me when I say I wish they did. So I don't think Atari needs to reinvent itself as a new game company or brand, that part of the company died out 30 years ago. I thought they were far more special as a personal computer company.