Gone But Not Forgotten Video Game Developers/Publishers Lost 2000-2017 - Hasbro Interactive

Gone But Not Forgotten Video Game Developers/Publishers Lost 2000-2017

Hasbro Interactive were an American video game production and publishing subsidiary of Hasbro, the very large game and toy company, Hasbro Interactive were active in the video game industry for six years from 1995 to their eventual sale in 2001 to Infogrames.

Based out of Alameda, California and Chapel Hill, North Carolina Hasbro Interactive were formed in late 1995 in order to compete in the rapidly growing games industry, using the various IP’s that their parent company Hasbro already had with the likes of Monopoly and Scrabble which had already been successful for other developers namely Virgin Interactive.

With the vast experience of Hasbro when it came to games, the switch to video games seem like a natural choice for the company and a great chance to increase the companies revenue. Starting out with the 1995 adaption of one of Hasbro’s most famous board games Monopoly.

 Adaption of Monopoly for Windows, Windows 3.x and Macintosh in 1995 was one of the first Games Hasbro Interactive were involved with

The adaption for Windows, Windows 3.x and Macintosh was a complete reproduction of all aspects of the board game with the game able to represent player movements as 3D animations, a nice touch was the ability to deactivate these, the game also supported up to six players at once as well as being able to player multiplayer over the internet. Generally the game was well received full marks from Computer  Gaming World in February 1996 calling it a big improvement over previous versions.

1996 saw Hasbro Interactive bring two additional Hasbro board games to home computers and consoles the first was an adaption of Othello, while the second was one of the most recognised board games around in Risk, this was also an important milestone for Hasbro Interactive with Risk releasing on the recently released Playstation to generally positive reviews scoring multiple 80+ scores, there was however a few stinkers thrown in NowGamer only scoring it at a 35, while French publication Génération 4 could only stump up a 17/100.

 Risk one of Hasbro's most well known IP's this adaption was released in 1997

1997 saw strong growth for Hasbro Interactive with revenues increasing by 145% from $35 million dollars up to a very healthy $86 million dollars. No doubt that a decent amount of that was from the increasing releases for the Playstation with Monopoly selling and estimated 1.5 million copies, however it was Frogger a remake of the 1981 Konami game that really saw profits spike even with the game not reviewing especially well it proved a commercial success with the game selling 3.3 million copies in North America alone and becoming one of the best selling Playstation game of all time, with the PC version selling another estimated half a million copies as well.

 The 1997 release of Frogger was a remake of the Arcade original

 Frogger proved to be one of Hasbro Interactive's most successful titles and went on to be one of the best selling Playstation titles of all time

It was in this time that Hasbro Interactive embarked on a internal and external development which would see the companies profits increase massively starting by the acquisition of smaller publisher Avalon Hill for only $6 million dollars this would also give them access to an addition 300 IP’s that Avalon Hill owned. They also purchased publisher MicroProse in the same year for $70 million dollars with 1998 seeing Hasbro massively increase their profits again to $196 million dollars.

1999 saw Hasbro Interactive publish the successor to the 1994 published MicroProse game Transport Tycoon which the rights they acquired the year before, titled RollerCoaster Tycoon it would become the best selling PC game of 1999 and would spawn several sequels and expansions over the future years with the IP having an entry as recent as 2016 with RollerCoaster Tycoon World.

 Release in 1999 RollerCoaster Tycoon was the successor to MicroProse's 1994 Transport Tycoon

The rapidly increasing in size Hasbro Interactive had a very busy 1999 publishing a substantial number of games on PC and console a remake of Civilisation II called Civilization II: Test of Time which did not go over well with critics and fans of the Civilisation series. 1999 also saw a few Arcade classic receive the 3D treatment Centipede, Q*Bert and a remake of Atari’s classic Pong, renamed Pong The Next Level all three received a mixed reception from critics.

Even with some of their published games being moderately received Hasbro Interactive continued to grow with estimates putting the company on course to make $1 billion dollars revenue by 2002. however 1999 also saw the first signs of a downturn for Hasbro at a time when they had just become the 3^rd largest publisher even so a $74 million dollar loss with a large number of ongoing projects and new employees resulting in swift action taken by Hasbro.

Hasbro Interactive in response to the downturn in profits began closing some studios the former MicroProse offices located in Alameda, California and Chapel Hill, North Carolina, some good news did come out of this however several members of the Chapel Hill North Carolina studio went on to found Vicious Cycle Software who made the Ben 10 series of games from 2008 to 2012 and were active in the game industry up until their eventual closure in 2016 after being acquired by Little Orbit in 2014 who proceeded to butcher the studio.

It is now the middle of 2000 and the dot-com bubble has well and truly burst, by this time Hasbro the parent company of Hasbro Interactive had lost 70% of its share value, to combat this in 2001 they sold the whole of Hasbro Interactive which included the majority of their video game rights and properties including the Atari brand and Hasbro’s Game.com division as well as developer MicroProse.

Infogrames purchased Hasbro Interactive in 2002 for an estimated $100 million dollars.

By the end a company that was predicted to make a billion dollars revenue by 2002 was sold to Infogrames for $100 million dollars, as part of the buyout Infogrames gained the rights to develop games based off of the Hasbro properties for a period of 15 years. By 2003 Hasbro Interactive ceased to exist in May of that year it was renamed Atari Interactive Inc a wholly owned subsidiary of Infogrames Entertainment, eventually renaming themselves Atari, they still own the rights to the Atari properties they acquired in the buyout.

Hasbro reacquired the digital gaming rights to their properties from Atari in 2005 for a reported fee of $65 million dollars as part of the deal Atari’s parent company Infogrames acquired the rights to produce video games based on 10 Hasbro owned franchises, these included the likes of Dungeons & Dragons, Monopoly, Scrabble, Game of Life, Battleship, Clue, Yahtzee, Simon, Risk and Boggle.

Hasbro also bought back the digital rights to Transformers, My Little Pony, Tonka, Magic: The Gathering, Connect Four, Candyland and Playskool. Hasbro are no longer in the video game development business they are still involved in the industry but now licenses their properties to third part developers rather than develop the game themselves. Notable companies like Activision, EA and the no longer with us THQ as well as several releases aimed towards the mobile phone market.

Written By

P J Gibbon