Krome Studios Acquires Melbourne House

Company

(Krome Studios press release)

Brisbane, Australia - November 3, 2006 - Krome Studios, the largest videogame company in Australia and leading worldwide independent game studio, announced today that it has acquired Melbourne House, the former Atari development studio based in Melbourne, Australia. The addition of Melbourne House bolsters Krome Studios? size to almost 300 in-house making it truly one of the largest and most proven independent studios worldwide.

With the Melbourne House acquisition, Krome Studios inherits highly skilled and seasoned programmers, engineers, artists and production personnel which will help work on Krome?s upcoming games and further enhance the studios? tools pipeline. The Melbourne studio will now be known as Krome Studios Melbourne and will act as an extension to the headquarters in Brisbane. This acquisition, along with Krome Studios Adelaide, which was formed and announced earlier this year, and a network of extensive outsourcing partners throughout Asia Pacific and Europe solidifies Krome as a leading global independent studio.

?It?s an amazing time for us right now and we couldn?t be happier to welcome this new team to the Krome family,? said Robert Walsh, CEO and Co-founder of Krome Studios.
?Acquiring the Melbourne House studio will allow us to continue to expand our company with additional seasoned talent, many who we also are great friends with, to help further grow our business and position ourselves as a leading developer working on both current and next generation titles.?

Krome Studios recently finished development on The Legend of Spyro?: A New Beginning for Sierra Entertainment, and continues the development on the upcoming Hellboy (*working title) for Konami Digital Entertainment, Inc. which is scheduled for release in 2007. The studio is also working on several unannounced current and next generation games and focusing on extending their catalog of original IPs.

For more information on Krome Studios, please visit www.kromestudios.com.

About Krome Studios
Krome Studios is one of the leading independent developers in the world and the largest game development studio in Australia with more than 280 employees. Founded in 1999, the studio is best known for developing the TY the Tasmanian Tiger? series, which has sold two million units worldwide and is the best-selling Australian game of all time. Krome Studios has shipped more than a dozen titles, including the TY the Tasmanian Tiger? series, The Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning, King Arthur, The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron Boy Genius?: Jet Fusion, Sunny Garcia Surfing?, Extremely Goofy Skateboarding, Barbie? Beach Vacation? and Championship Surfer? to name a few. The official homepage of Krome Studios is www.kromestudios.com.

KROME STUDIOS and the Krome Studios logo and TY The Tasmanian Tiger are trademarks of Krome Studios Pty Ltd. All Trademarks not owned by Krome Studios are the property of their respective owners.

"The Legend of Spyro?: A New Beginning" interactive game ? 2006 Universal Interactive, Inc. Spyro and related characters are (tm) and ? Universal Interactive, Inc. All rights reserved. Sierra and the Sierra logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of Sierra Entertainment, Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries.

(Infogrames press release)

Lyon, France, November 3, 2006 - In line with Infogrames? corporate strategy announced in early 2006, designed to streamline operations at its internal development studios and get the most out of its franchises, the company announced today that it has sold Atari Melbourne House Pty Limited (Australia) to Krome Studios Pty Limited.

?The sale of our Melbourne House studio is consistent with the strategy implemented by the Group, which consists of prioritizing the outsourcing of development to external teams around the world, while focusing on the creation and production sides of the business,? explained Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Bruno Bonnell.

Under the terms of the sale agreement, the Atari game ?Test Drive Unlimited? for Playstation 2 and PSP currently being developed by Melbourne House will be completed by the studio jointly with Eden Games.

The parties have not disclosed the financial terms of the agreement.

Submitted by anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 03/11/06 - 11:30 PM Permalink

1. Lubby - Fri, 3 Nov 2006 12:53:8ZKROM(EA) Studios :D
2. Anonymous Coward - Fri, 3 Nov 2006 13:8:57ZGod every press release these guys do, they have a list that goes on and on ranting about Jimmy Neutron and a whole sling of games, its like a cut and paste job with the disclaimer and studio info
3. Anonymous Coward - Fri, 3 Nov 2006 13:21:30ZEver heard of paragraphs ?
in Comic Book Guy Voice: "Worst Formatting Ever"
4. Anonymous Coward - Fri, 3 Nov 2006 13:24:55ZThats just sumea, you put in a post with paragraphs and it removes it.
5. Zax - Fri, 3 Nov 2006 13:25:21ZKrome have bought some good tech (guys) there
6. Souri - Fri, 3 Nov 2006 13:34:9Z#2 that's really typical of most press releases, I would say.
I'd be interested in how much Krome Studios paid Atari for Melbourne House. I just checked and saw Foundation 9 paid $20 million (US) for Shiny from Atari. It would be interesting to find out anyway, seeing as MH was a developer of similar size (although Shiny had some IP, some had probably dated though).

A part of the initial response from reading the press release was delight that another Australian studio bought out the company, and that it was Krome Studios was a bit of a surprise. I was expecting another large publisher to do so. Just reading on some of the technical achievements that MH were able to do with the PSP port of Test Drive: Unlimited, I'm sure Krome will be eager to utilize that technology :) This is probably the best outcome possible for the local industry.

But sadly, it's probably safe to say that the enduring Melbourne House legacy has finally come to an end today. The name is gone, Melbourne House are Krome Studios Melbourne now. It's no longer Melbourne House any more than Krome Studios Adelaide is Ratbag Games. It's a bit sad to see, particularly when Melbourne House was cut down in their prime that was the Grand Prix Challenge / Transformers era, to see the incredible potential they had wasted.
7. Lubby - Fri, 3 Nov 2006 14:45:6ZIts interesting what you say Souri, however as a previous employee of Ratbag games, i can tell you that the Ratbag spirit still lives on in Krome Adelaide. Not much has changed except for the name and offices. If anything, the Adelaide Krome office rejuvinated what was a flagging team. Things were bad at Ratbag along time before the shutdown. I imagine that its a very similar story with the Melbourne House bunch.
8. Anonymous Coward - Fri, 3 Nov 2006 14:53:15ZMost of the guys I used to work with at Ratbag, who know work at the Adelaide Krome studios think that in the end being with Krome in a Adelaide studio was a very positive experience.
9. Anonymous Coward - Sat, 4 Nov 2006 12:49:2ZIt's a shame that they wont keep the name alive. Surely Krome: Melbourne House works just as well as Krome Studios Melbourne.
10. Anonymous Coward - Sat, 4 Nov 2006 13:38:48ZLegalities are more the cause then the desire to not use the name.
11. Anonymous Coward - Sat, 4 Nov 2006 18:0:42ZSo Krome only bought the assets of MH and not the IP including the name of the company and the associated category of games dating back to the 80's ?
12. Anonymous Coward - Sat, 4 Nov 2006 20:47:52ZWho knows its just sad for whatever reason that the studio won't be keeping the melbourne house name.
13. jojo - Sun, 5 Nov 2006 16:37:44ZI'm thinking that the amount paid for MH wasn't that much... if Atari couldn't find a buyer then they would have to have closed the studio and would have got nothing.. which could have happened. I'm sure in the negotiations that was mentioned and brought the price down. At least they got something and were able to offload the studio's expenses on to krome which would have suited Atari. It's good that Krome came to the rescue..
14. Anonymous Coward - Sun, 5 Nov 2006 17:24:39ZThere were other interested parties as mentioned in the gamasutra article, but Krome was the only one which would of kept the studio together. The other offers would of split Melbourne House up.
15. Andy - Sun, 5 Nov 2006 19:53:7Z$1
16. DigDug - Sun, 5 Nov 2006 21:31:54ZWe'll found out how much Atari sold Beam for in their annual report.
17. Anonymous Coward - Mon, 6 Nov 2006 1:8:46ZSee melbourne house was actually a rename of another studio, beam. So its happened once before.
18. Anonymous Coward - Mon, 6 Nov 2006 4:22:40ZMy money would be on $1 too. I doubt Atari/Infogrames would be able to afford the redundancy payments should they have shut down the studio. Some people have been there an awfully long time, equating to decent payouts.
19. Anonymous Coward - Mon, 6 Nov 2006 13:0:52ZOriginally it was Melbourne House. It grew out of Melbourne House book publishing. Thhe name, Melbourne House, was sold to a UK games developer and the name changed to Beam Software. This was at about the start of the NES development era. The UK company didn't use the name and let it expire, so Beam Software took it back again.