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Company Background
Like Argonaut and
SCi, Empire is something of a veteran in the UK games industry, having been founded in 1987 by Ian Higgins and Simon Jeffrey, its current CEO and MD (respectively).
Empire has, until recently, focused on
computer games development and publishing and has published a large volume of titles (over 100 to date). It originally had a core specialisation in simulation titles (principally flight) but has also achieved
success with sports, management and pinball titles.
Following its flotation in mid 2000, Empire began to shift its focus on to the larger and more lucrative console market and will have moved the bulk of their
development from PC to next-generation consoles by the end of 2002.
The Company is based in north London and employs some 160 people. As a small regional games publisher, Empire funds the development of titles
(or licenses finished product) and sells direct to major retailers in the UK and in Germany. However, it uses third party publishers and distributors in the USA and rest of world, from whom it receives a
contribution per unit sold. The Company currently has a high value deal with US publisher Vivendi Universal to distribute all Empire's current titles in North America. The Company also retains three staff in the US
(Entertainment International Inc.) to assist their North American publisher partners.
The Company raised £1.8m in May 2000, £4.4m at the time of flotation in July 2000 and £6m in July 2001 (£2m of which were
founders' shares). It made a number of small acquisitions during Q4 2000, including developers Razorworks and Rowan Software and bought German publisher eJay AG out of liquidation in March 02.
Activities
The Company retains some 6 internal
development teams and current employs a further 7 external teams with a total of 13 new titles in development for PC, PlayStation and PlayStation II. The most notable internal game in development is Starship Troopers.
Mind's Eye: Development company that is wholly owned by Empire. Developer of the 220,000 unit-selling humourous PC/PSX puzzle game Sheep. Currently creating Starsky and Hutch.
Razorworks: Development company that is a wholly owned subsidiary of Empire. Creators of Enemy Engaged and Total Immersion Racing .
eJay:
Bought out of liquidation in a deal worth between 400K Euros and 800K Euros, eJay specialises in music creation software and comprises 12 development staff working on no less than 11 SKUs (as at May 02). Typical development times are very short (compared to games development), at 3 months/SKU, so costs are low.
Eutechnyx: UK-based independent developers. Veteran driving game developers. Created Big Mutha Truckers series for Empire.
Key Titles
Big Mutha Truckers 2 and Flat Out 2
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