Author: John Merlino
Date: 16:53:47 08/16/02
Go up one level in this thread
On August 16, 2002 at 19:05:09, Vincent Diepeveen wrote: >On August 16, 2002 at 15:38:13, John Merlino wrote: > >>On August 16, 2002 at 15:21:55, Vincent Diepeveen wrote: >> >>>On August 16, 2002 at 11:53:23, John Merlino wrote: >>> >>>the spirit of the argument is that if it would have worked for >>>NT 4.0 it would work for 2000/xp too!! >>> >>>obviously we're not personally blaming you. ubisoft wasn't owning >>>CM yet when 6000 was released, were they? >> >>No, they were not the owners. Nor were the people who Ubi Soft bought it from >>(Gores Technology group), nor were the people that THEY bought it from (Mattel >>Interactive). >> >>At that time Chessmaster was owned by The Learning Company and was released as a >>Mindscape product. This was almost exactly four years ago. > >Wow, that sounds real weird. Buying a product from someone who doesn't >own the rights on it. What happened that in the end ubisoft DID get the >rights? All of the owners mentioned above had the rights to the program at the time they owned it. I'm sorry if I made it sound confusing (or, rather, more confusing than it already is). The Chessmaster product line is just one of many that were sold when the above companies were sold. Here's the complete timeline: The Software Toolworks were the original owners of Chessmaster, first published in 1986. The Software Toolworks bought Mindscape around 1991 and shortly thereafter changed their name to Mindscape. Pearson PLC (a British publising congolmerate) bought Mindscape around 1993. They owned many companies, so Mindscape was still a separate entity, wholly owned by Pearson. Mindscape was then sold by Pearson to The Learning Company around 1995. The Learning Company was based in Massachusetts and specialized in educational and edutainment software. The Learning Company was bought by Mattel in 1998 and renamed to Mattel Interactive (we actually merged with Mattel's software division). We've all heard of Mattel, and their software division was riding high on huge Barbie game sales. However, the executives of The Learning Company did an excellent job of hiding how badly their company was doing overall, and less than a year later Mattel Interactive was losing $1 million per day. Mattel's CEO, Jill Barad, resigned less than 18 months later. From then on, Mattel tried desperately to find a buyer for Mattel Interactive. In late 2000, Mattel Interactive was sold to Gores Technologies Group (an American holding company that specialized in turning around financially troubled companies, sometimes selling them, sometimes keeping them). The price was, for all intents and purposes, "free". Actually, no cash was exchanged up front, but I believe quite a bit of money in "future considerations" eventually traded hands -- I really do not know. A few months later, after laying off a large amount of employees and cancelling many projects that were currently in development, Gores DID turn us around. They then sold us to Ubi Soft. The only internal development team that remained was Chessmaster -- all other developers were laid off. The rights to Chessmaster went along with every sale. jm
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