Leading Games Designers, Publishers and Manufacturers

An insight into leading game companies

Electronic Arts (EA)

EA, or Electronic Arts as it is more formally known, was

founded in 1982 by a man named Trip Hawkins.

The company started out primarily as a games publisher

for the PC but then branched out into developing and

publishing games for both the PC and other existing games

consoles.

Some of its most popular developed games include The Sims

and Spore, both simulation games for the PC. Primarily

however, EA works on publishing games developed by other

companies.

EA publishes games on almost every popular console, from

the DS and PS3 to even the IPhone.

They do not seem to have any specific trend in genres,

however, their FIFA sports games and Simulation games are

probably their most well known.

2010 Profit - $706 Million

Blizzard Entertainment

Blizzard Entertainment was founded in 1991 under a

different name by three university graduates. It develops and self publishes titles it has made.

Blizzard Entertainment is best known for its online, massively multiplayer PC game, World of Warcraft, along with its single player games Starcraft and Diablo.

This company develops many genres of game but seems to mostly favour RPG and Real time Strategy Games.

So far the company has only created games for the PC gaming platform.

2010 Profit - Unknown

ID Software.Inc

ID software is a US based game development company that was founded

in 1991 by 4 members of the company 'SoftDisk'.

The company has made 4 breakthrough games to

date, Wolfenstein, Doom, Quake and Rage. Their most popular game,

Quake has been made into a series with more than 3 games released

and a popular online massively multiplayer game.

The company primarily designed games for the PC but

also branched out onto the Playstation and Nintendo's

Snes console.

ID software seems to be mainly focussed on shooter games, in

particular, first person shooters.

ID software usually publishes through the company Activision however their newest game, Rage, was published through EA.

2010 Profit - Unknown

Activision

Founded in 1979, Activision was the first ever independant games developer and publisher for consoles. They started out working on games for the Atari and then branched out onto other consoles as technology improved.

Activision was responsible for the development and publishing of The Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, Call of Duty and The James Bond series.

Activision has a wide variety of games in different genres and does not seem to favour a particular one.

2010 Profit - Unknown

Valve Corporation

Valve was founded in 1996 by Gabe Newell and

Mike Harrington, previously employees at

Microsoft. Half Life, released in 1998 was a

huge success, recieving over 40 Game of the

Year Awards.Since their success, the company

has gone on to create many quality games such as the Portal, Team Fortress and Left 4 Dead series.

Valve publishes its own games and primarily uses the PC platform, where it hosts a direct download gaming service known as Steam.

Valve occasionally releases games for the PS3 and XBOX360, however, PC games are their main priority.

First person shooter/Puzzler games seem to be particularly popular with Valve in terms of genre.

Profit 2010 - Unknown

Leading Game Manufacturers

As already established on my blog post,the game development industry is clearly dominated by three conglomerate corporations, Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo. All three of these companies have manufactured a successful 7th generation video games console. I will be going into more detail about each of these here.

Microsoft is a multinational American based company owned by Bill Gates. This company is new to the gaming scene, originally only developing operating systems and interpreters. Microsoft has recieved great success with their Xbox console and is in constant 7th generation competition against the PS3 and Wii, with their console the Xbox360.

2010 Profit - $23.3 Billion

Sony is a multinational, Japan based conglomorate company that primarily specialises in electronics from laptops to blu ray players and TV's. Sony, specialising in most other electical devices made the leap into the game industry with the Playstation in 1994. Varients of the console have been released with higher graphics capabilities and new features until they released their seventh generation console, the PS3, in 2006. The console has continued to sell well, despite its opposition from the Wii and Xbox360.

2010 Profit - $86.64 billion

Running since 1889, it is the longest running

of all companies listed on this prezi. Nintendo, founded and run in Japan, is another multi national gaming company (although not originally so). Since the release of its NES gaming console, it has come in leaps and bounds and currently has 3 best selling consoles on the market. The Nintendo Wii, DS (DSi, DS lite) and the newly released 3DS. The Nintendo Wii in particular is a highly competitive 7th generation console, whic attracts both lone players as well as families.

Recently announcing anew console due for release, the Wii U, Nintendo continues to go strong.

2010 Profit -Unknown

The End

I will now be researching into indie game developers

before going on to look at legal restraints within the

gaming industry.

Employees - 79,000

3.

2.

Employees - 4600

Employees - 200

4.

As seen by my blog entry, I have been researching into the leading game development, publishing and manufacturing companies dominating the market today. In this presentation, I will be taking a deeper look into the history of these companies, their creation date, types of games released and the consoles they release on. I will start by looking at the top 5 publishing/developing companies that I have listed on my blog, before looking into the top manufacturers.

Employees - 4000

1.

5.

Employees - 8000

Employees - 168,200

Employees - 280

Employees - 14,712