History
DreamCatcher Interactive was founded in 1996 in Toronto, Canada. The company’s first title was the adventure game Jewels of the Oracle, which achieved enough success to grow the retail business. Dreamcatcher would later release The Crystal Key which sold over a half million units in North America. Continuing the company's growth, in November 2000, DreamCatcher signed with Her Interactive to publish the Nancy Drew franchise.
In late 2002, most of the assets and development teams of French based publisher, Cryo Interactive were absorbed by DreamCatcher Interactive, forming the base for DreamCatcher Europe including key offices and a large internal studio. After the acquisition of Cryo Interactive, Dreamcatcher created a publishing division called The Adventure Company in early 2003. The company also partnered with both Wanadoo Edition and Microïds, as well as other studios in the development and distribution of games including Syberia, Still Life and ObsCure. In 2005 the main Microïds studio was acquired by Ubisoft with Dreamcatcher retaining publishing rights to the games being created.
The Adventure Company brand label under DreamCatcher has released many adventure game series' including series' based on Agatha Christie novels. They also recently signed to release a series of titles based on The Hardy Boys. Outside of adventure gaming, DreamCatcher is best known for publishing the first-person shooter Painkiller developed with People Can Fly. Painkiller became a commercial success and was signed with the CPL World Tour 2005. Dreamcatcher would also create another label, Silverline Software, around 2004 for the distribution of some non-core games and the publishing of utility software. Silverline Software would release the "Time to Ride" series of girl’s horse games starting in 2004, which would later be acquired by Ubisoft.
In 2006, JoWooD Entertainment announced the purchase of DreamCatcher Games as a way of increasing their presence into the North American gaming market in addition to acquiring the company's key titles and licenses. Since the acquisition, DreamCatcher Games has continued to launch titles both under The Adventure Company and DreamCatcher labels including new games created by JoWooD like the SpellForce series. In 2011, JoWooD went into administration causing DreamCatcher to file for bankruptcy. In November 2011, Nordic Games Holding announced that they had acquired DreamCatcher Games and would be turning it into a publishing label of their subsidiary Nordic Games GmbH. Nordic Games Holding had previously acquired JoWooD and The Adventure Company in August also turning both brands into publishing labels of Nordic Games GmbH. Following the acquisition it was announced that business operations would be relocated to Vienna, Austria.
Read more about this topic: DreamCatcher Interactive
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Three million of such stones would be needed before the work was done. Three million stones of an average weight of 5,000 pounds, every stone cut precisely to fit into its destined place in the great pyramid. From the quarries they pulled the stones across the desert to the banks of the Nile. Never in the history of the world had so great a task been performed. Their faith gave them strength, and their joy gave them song.”
—William Faulkner (1897–1962)
“Don’t you realize that this is a new empire? Why, folks, there’s never been anything like this since creation. Creation, huh, that took six days, this was done in one. History made in an hour. Why it’s a miracle out of the Old Testament!”
—Howard Estabrook (1884–1978)
“If usually the “present age” is no very long time, still, at our pleasure, or in the service of some such unity of meaning as the history of civilization, or the study of geology, may suggest, we may conceive the present as extending over many centuries, or over a hundred thousand years.”
—Josiah Royce (1855–1916)