Firaxis Games - History

History

Early on, Firaxis has produced several PC games, including Sid Meier's Gettysburg! and Sid Meier's Antietam!, based on their namesake famous American Civil War battles, and Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, a space colonization game taking place in the Alpha Centauri star system.

In early 2000, co-founder Brian Reynolds parted with Firaxis to form his new studio, Big Huge Games. Firaxis Games then went on to release Sid Meier's SimGolf, a golf course building/management game. Perhaps their most popular releases have been Civilization III, and later Civilization IV, sequels to Meier's original Civilization game.

In November 2004, Firaxis released Sid Meier's Pirates!, an update of Meier's classic 1987 game of the same name. An Xbox version of the game was released in 2005 and a PSP version (developed by Full Fat) was released in 2007.

Civilization IV started production in late 2003 and was released in 2005. Civilization Revolution, a console-only version of their popular Civilization series, was released in 2008.

On November 7, 2005, Take-Two Interactive announced that it was acquiring Firaxis. The terms of the agreement were not disclosed, but according to the SEC filing it amounted for US$26.7 million in cash, stock, and development advances, with almost US$11.3 million of that figure coming in the form of possible considerations based on future product sales.

The company was consolidated with PopTop Software in March 2006, the resultant combined studio to be headed up by Sid Meier. Jeff Briggs assumed the role of Chairman in April 2006 and left the company completely in November.

In April 2007, it was announced that Soren Johnson had left the company and joined Electronic Arts to work on Spore with Lead Designer Will Wright. Johnson was formerly a key person for Firaxis, acting as Co-Designer for Civilization III and later Lead Designer on Civilization IV.

In September 2009, the studio moved from Hunt Valley to Sparks, Maryland.