Trip Hawkins, one of the most well known names in the game industry, has announced he is leaving the latest company that he founded nine years ago as its CEO. In a post on his Digital Chocolate blog, Hawkins wrote, "... I am transitioning now into a consulting and advisory relationship with Digital Chocolate." The company has released a number of mobile and social networking-based games.
TechCrunch also reports, via unnamed sources, that Digital Chocolate has laid off up to 180 team members in various offices around the world. It's not know how many team members remain with the company. Hawkins seems to allude to those layoffs in his blog post, saying, "For its next stage of growth, Digital Chocolate is narrowing its focus and it made sense to get more streamlined."
As he himself notes, Hawkins founded EA nearly 30 years ago, on May 28th, 1982. In 1991, Hawkins left EA and founded 3DO, which attempted to launch a game console. Despite being a powerful system in terms of hardware, the 3DO's high price ($700 at launch in 1993) meant that it never caught on with gamers. 3DO shut down the hardware side of its business in 1996 and focused on game software development and publishing.
In 2003, 3DO went into bankruptcy, with many of its game properties sold off to other publishers like Ubisoft. Hawkins founded Digital Chocolate that same year and it became one of the first publishers to concentrate on mobile phone gaming, long before smartphones were generally available.
In his new blog post, Hawkins hints that he doesn't have any firm future plans, saying only, "I will remain involved in digital media and games and be available for opportunities including mentoring, consulting, teaching, speaking and writing."
Via: TechCrunch
Source: Trip Hawkins's blog site
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