Microsoft recently said it will respond to an increasingly strained gaming market by maximizing the potential of its core intellectual properties. And they are not the first publisher to have told us that this year.

This week, we resurface a conversation from the Entertainment Software Association's iicon conference in April with Mark Nash, COO and co-founder of Balor Games, and Wade Rosen, chairman and CEO of Atari. The discussion digs into how these smaller, nimbler publishers are building around their strongest assets, using catalogs, acquisitions, physical distribution, retro communities and bespoke publishing infrastructure to squeeze more value out of IP without overextending.

Key topics include:

• Atari's "niche it to death" strategy, with Rosen explaining how the company found its lane in retro gaming after a period of soul-searching and turnaround work.
• Balor Games' view of IP as infrastructure, not just content, and how the publisher is building a curator model around discoverability, flexible services and a portfolio of more than 60 titles.
• How Atari's acquisitions of Night Dive, Digital Eclipse, Intellivision and Implicit Conversions give it specialized capabilities across remasters, collections, emulation, hardware, licensing and physical releases.
• The "whole animal" approach to franchises, where a game is not just a one-time digital sale but a starting point for bundles, subscriptions, physical SKUs, merchandise, hardware ecosystems and potentially transmedia extensions.
• The future of the Triple-I space, including how Balor is thinking about sequels, franchise-building, AI uncertainty, tighter budgets and the opportunity for smaller teams to generate outsized returns.

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Credits:

• Host: Neil Barbour
• Guest: Mark Nash, COO and Co-founder of Balor Games & Wade Rosen, Chairman and CEO of Atari.
• Produced & Edited By: Neil Barbour
• Published With Assistance From: Sophie Carr, Feranmi Adeoshun, Patrick Moroney