By Cliff Peale
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Games Inc. hopes the acquisition of online games licenses including Monopoly, Scrabble and Risk will make its Internet entertainment business profitable in 2004.

Games, run by local businessman Roger Ach, said Tuesday that it will pay $1.125 million - $100,000 in cash and the remainder in preferred stock - to Atari Inc. for the stable of games. The deal also includes the games.com Internet domain.

It will upgrade the games.com site and relaunch this spring.

The company lost $2.5 million for the year ended June 30 but has been narrowing its losses for several years. It has said it needed $2.5 million in capital to fund operations for the current fiscal year.

"We will substantially increase the revenue, and we should be solidly profitable this year," Ach said. "This brings us the use of some of the most recognizable brand names in the world."

Using its Internet sites www.lottery.com and www.cards.com, Games Inc. has incurred those losses while trying to convince states to allow online sales of lottery tickets. But when that didn't happen, it altered its strategy two years ago to pursue the Internet games business.

That has meant a financial struggle for the company and for Ach, its chairman and chief executive officer. He and private investors have poured more than $19 million into the company since its founding in the early 1990s.

Games Inc. has said that the increased online "skill-based games," particularly the icon games acquired in the Atari deal, would increase the number of registered users to almost 9 million.

That will increase revenue exponentially from less than $1 million now, Ach said.

E-mail cpeale@enquirer.com