Mindscape Group

From Free net encyclopedia

Template:Cleanup-date The Mindscape Group is an international software publishing company, previously a sub-label to The Software Toolworks. As of 2004, the group has offices in France, England, Ireland, Germany, the Netherlands, Asia, Australia and Latin America. It has an annual turnover of €38 million and employs 150 people.

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History

Mindscape started as a sub-brand of The Software Toolworks, a computer game publisher, active from 1980 until 2001. It started out publishing software for Heath/Zenith personal computers. Early products included Mychess® and the C/80 C compiler for CP/M. The two most popular products were the very long-lived series Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing and the Chessmaster series of computer games.

In 1990 TST debuted the Miracle Piano, a critically acclaimed music-teaching product which almost sank the company after it over-ordered the piano hardware, was not able to sell through copies of the product very quickly, and was stuck with a large inventory.

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Mergers and acquisitions

1994: Purchases RPG publisher SSI and changes name to Mindscape.
1999: Sold to Mattel for around US$3.6 billion, causing a strong impact to Mattel's stock price and the ouster of its CEO. Mattel subsequently sells Mindscape to Gore Technology Group for just a share of the profits that Gores could obtain by selling the properties.
2001: Mindscape is made a separate company in following the purchase of the international division of The Learning Company from the Gore Technology Group by Jean-Pierre Nordman.
2002: Montparnasse Multimedia is purchased by Mindscape.

As of 2006, Ubisoft continues to publish Chessmaster titles. Broderbund is the new publisher of Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing.

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