It's always a sad affair whenever we hear a certain beloved videogame developing company being down in the dumps. Such is the case with Atari, who had once again been put on notice by NASDAQ. Yes, they're in that sort of dump - the financial dump - and as such, NASDAQ has ruled that Atari's name will be stricken off the charts. This isn't the first time that it's happened to Atari - in fact, they've been warned by NASDAQ many times before, in light of the company's ever-decreasing value.

What happens now, then? Atari missed the deadline that NASDAQ gave it to raise its stock value to above the US$ 15 million cut-off point before March 20, 2008 and so a delisting seems to be in order. Which is pretty bad for the company who literally invented videogames.

Of course, all may not be lost. Atari has declared that it intends to request a hearing before a NASDAQ panel in order to appeal the delisting. This is just in time, considering that Infogrames intends to acquire all of the remaining outstanding shares of Atari's common stock. But with that news, there's also the deal of the request being denied by the panel itself. So there's no guarantee that there will be a hearing - fingers crossed, in any case.