Westwood Studios
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| Subsidiary | |
| Industry | Video games |
| Fate | Dissolved |
| Founded | 1985 |
| Founders |
Brett Sperry Louis Castle |
| Defunct | January 29, 2003 |
| Headquarters | Las Vegas, Nevada |
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Key people
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| Products |
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| Owner | Electronic Arts |
| Parent | Electronic Arts |
| Website | www.westwood.com (archived homepage on 2000-03-04) |
Westwood Studios, Inc. was an American video game developer, based in Las Vegas, Nevada. It was founded by Brett Sperry and Louis Castle in 1985 as Westwood Associates and was renamed Westwood Studios when it merged with Virgin Interactive in 1992. The company was bought from Virgin Interactive by Electronic Arts (EA) in 1998, and closed by EA in 2003.
Westwood is best known for developing real-time strategy, adventure and role-playing genres. It was listed in Guinness World Records for selling more than 10 million copies of Command & Conquer worldwide. The last former Westwood employee quit working for Electronic Arts after the release of Command & Conquer: Generals in 2003.
Brett Sperry and Louis Castle founded Westwood Studios in 1985.
According to Louis Castle, the company was named after the "entertainment meets professional" character of Westwood, California.
We really liked the "entertainment meets professional" character of Westwood CA (in L.A.) and the attraction of the area to teens and young adults felt like the perfect fit for a new company specializing in entertainment software. Even back then we recognized that it took a team of people to make great products so we appended the "Associates" to emphasize that aspect of product development. We were not really sure if we could make a go at game development so the original name "Westwood Associates" also gave us the ability to get into more traditional business software if necessary.
The company's first projects consisted of contract work for companies like Epyx and Strategic Simulations, Inc. (SSI), porting 8-bit titles to 16-bit systems like Commodore Amiga and Atari ST. Proceeds from contract work allowed the company to expand into designing its own games in-house. Their first original title was Mars Saga, a game developed for Electronic Arts and released in 1988. They laid the foundations for the real-time strategy genre with the release of real-time tactics game BattleTech: The Crescent Hawk's Revenge, one of the more literal translations of the classic tabletop game BattleTech.
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Wikipedia