Crossy Road's Creator Is Now in Charge of Atari's Phone Games

Hipster Whale co-founder Matt Hall becomes Atari's executive vice president of mobile, a new job reporting straight to CEO Wade Rosen.

Matt Hall made Crossy Road, a phone-game series that had passed 340 million downloads by June, according to Game Developer. Now he runs mobile for Atari, the company that owns Pong.

Atari named Hall executive vice president of Atari Mobile on Tuesday, Video Games Chronicle reported. It's a new position, and he reports directly to chairman and CEO Wade Rosen. Atari's announcement says he'll oversee the mobile business and help lead the company's plan to ship across PC, console, web and phones.

The job runs both ways. Atari says it wants its best-performing PC and console games on mobile, and its mobile games on PC, console and the web. To get there, Hall is supposed to get Atari's games running across different engines and platforms, deepen ties with outside mobile platforms and build the setup for a steady stream of mobile and web releases.

"Atari is a company eager to lean into mobile as a key part of its cross-platform strategy, and that's very exciting to me," Hall said in the release. He added that he wants to bring the company's best PC and console games "to a much larger audience."

Rosen's pitch in the same release was that mobile is growing up, and that winning there now takes discipline, tight technical work, games built for several platforms and strong, creative IP. "Since joining Atari earlier this year, Matt has already established himself as a valued leader," Rosen said.

Hall isn't starting from zero. Atari points to its RollerCoaster Tycoon mobile titles and the studios it bought, Hipster Whale and Early Morning Studios, as a base to build on. Its catalog runs past 400 games, including Asteroids and Centipede, so there's plenty for a phone version to come from.

That "earlier this year" was a purchase. In June, Atari agreed to pay $29.3 million upfront for Hipster Whale, the Melbourne studio Hall co-founded with Andy Sum in 2014, Game Developer reported. A performance-based earn-out could add as much as $10 million in cash across the following three years.

Besides Crossy Road, Hipster Whale has made Pac-Man 256, Disney Crossy Road and Crossy Road Castle, VGC reported. Its next one is close: Crossy Road Rush comes to Apple Arcade on Nov. 5.

Source: gamedeveloper.com, retrieved October 27, 2026. Other sources: gamespress.com.