Corporate ownership of TT

krtaylor · Post by **krtaylor** » 19 May 2003 02:22

I was trying to research the corporate ownership of TTD.

It was originally published by Microprose.

Microprose was bought by Hasbro Interactive.

Hasbro Interactive was bought by Infogrames.

Infogrames appears to have either been bought by Atari, or bought Atari and changed their name to it.

So it would appear that TTD is now owned by Atari. Certainly Roller Coaster Tycoon is.

Their website had a good deal of information on tons of games, some quite old, but nothing whatsoever on Transport Tycoon. I wonder if they've forgotten about it, or if they don't even know they have it?

Does anybody by any chance know anyone that works for any of the above companies? Never hurts to ask.

Hyronymus · Post by **Hyronymus** » 19 May 2003 08:16

I heard that Firaxis, the company from Sid Meier, bought all latent titles from Infogrames (which was nothing less then the software department from Hasbro Inc.). And if I'm right it was Sid Meier and Brian Reynolds who developped the very first Transport Tycoon-ish game. You had sheer view on the map (just like when you read a map yourself). That game was truly limited, max. number of locomotives was 20 I believe!

Post by **orudge** » 19 May 2003 09:13

Yes, I believe Firaxis have control of Transport Tycoon now, not Atari.

anaconda · Post by **anaconda** » 19 May 2003 09:50

It's Infogrames that bought the name Atari (I dunno why, since infogrames has been pretty long in the buisness. Maybe it's because infogrames is too french? )

Anyway, if Fireaxis (the formerly Microprose) has bought back allmost all titles that was (C)Microprose, I think that's a good thing.

But it's too bad they haven't got back RailRoad Tycoon, though.

krtaylor · Post by **krtaylor** » 19 May 2003 14:12

Well, PopTop software who did Railroad Tycoon 2 did a pretty good job, although there are several things I don't like about it. By the way, they have announced RRT3 on their site.

I went to firaxis.com and found all sorts of info about Civ but nothing whatsoever about any Tycoon games. Are we sure they own the rights? Again, maybe they don't know they do, although that's less likely since they are much smaller than Atari/Infogrames.

Post by **orudge** » 19 May 2003 14:29

Well, I did a search on the Atari forums (the UK ones anyway) for "Transport" and there were two threads about TT, but that was in January, before all the Firaxis stuff. Maybe someone should e-mail Infogrames asking who owns TT.

krtaylor · Post by **krtaylor** » 19 May 2003 14:53

I emailed Corporate at Atari (Infogrames), and also Support at Firaxis. Who knows. If I hear anything I'll put it here.

SHADOW-XIII · Post by **SHADOW-XIII** » 19 May 2003 16:24

I also e-mailed them few months ago .... still nothing ...
mayb we can force it by sending plenty of mails at the same time ??

krtaylor · Post by **krtaylor** » 19 May 2003 16:50

Who did you e-mail, that you got ignored by?

The lady at Atari Corporate that I e-mailed, sent back an auto-replay that she is away from her e-mail until next week.

If she doesn't reply, she had a phone number listed on the website and I could give her a call after a bit.

Firaxis I got nothing, but it's only been a few hours, I'll give them a week or so.

SHADOW-XIII · Post by **SHADOW-XIII** » 19 May 2003 16:59

support centre

krtaylor · Post by **krtaylor** » 19 May 2003 17:07

uhhh... of Atari, or of Firaxis?

Flavius · Post by **Flavius** » 20 May 2003 01:27

Where does FishUK come into it? Did they get a license, can we get one?

krtaylor · Post by **krtaylor** » 20 May 2003 02:29

You may recall that both TTO and TTD were DOS games, never intended to work with Windows really. The version we know now as the Windows version wasn't released on its own, it was part of a package of "classic" games. That's where Fish came into it. My understanding is that Chris Sawyer was long gone, and Fish was hired to shoehorn TTD into a Windows window. Which they did, although somewhat crudely, among other things you can't control its size. I don't believe they had a license, I think they were just hired to do the conversion and as part of their contract got to stick their name in the credits.

SHADOW-XIII · Post by **SHADOW-XIII** » 20 May 2003 06:12

krtaylor wrote:uhhh... of Atari, or of Firaxis?

Infogrames

SHADOW-XIII · Post by **SHADOW-XIII** » 20 May 2003 06:12

Rollo wrote:Where does FishUK come into it? Did they get a license, can we get one?

dunno .... we can always send a mail o them with question

anaconda · Post by **anaconda** » 20 May 2003 06:39

krtaylor wrote:Well, PopTop software who did Railroad Tycoon 2 did a pretty good job, although there are several things I don't like about it. By the way, they have announced RRT3 on their site.

I disliked RRT2 more than I like it, to put it that way. I surely hope RRT3 will be more like RRT than RRT2 was. (ok, I know. This is the third time I post this, but I can't say it often enough).

Three tings I wish for, that was in RRT but not in RRT2:

- Play for 100 years without any mission or scenario other than being the best and score high on the hiscoretable
- Tunnels
- Dispatcher operation (lights)

Hyronymus · Post by **Hyronymus** » 20 May 2003 08:58

Rollo wrote:Where does FishUK come into it? Did they get a license, can we get one?

They were only hired to make the game Windowsable if you ask me. I think Firaxis has the best chances.

krtaylor · Post by **krtaylor** » 20 May 2003 14:01

PopTop already announced that RRT3 will have tunnels. In fact, they had it in caps. I think you are not alone in complaining about that. They also said they would have crossover trestles. I don't know about signalling though, I found the way they did that in RRT2 really aggravating and in fact it made the game all but unplayable, combined with the fact that, even on double-track, the fast trains wouldn't pass the slow ones. You couldn't get the throughput over a stretch of track the way you could with the original, using signal towers.

Anyway, at least there is a new version keeping the idea alive.

krtaylor · Post by **krtaylor** » 30 May 2003 16:42

By the way, I found a phone number for Firaxis:

410-891-3001

It does go there, although I haven't got a live body yet, I'm still working on it.

Big Mad Tony · Post by **Big Mad Tony** » 30 May 2003 20:06

So... where does CS come into this? Where does HE stand on ownership?

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