| |
Site Navigation
Main
News
Forums
Games
Games Database
Top 100
Release List
Support Files
Features
Reviews
Previews
Interviews
Editorials
Diaries
Misc
Download
Gallery
Music
Screenshots
Videos
Miscellaneous
Staff Members
Privacy Statement
|
|
Boom. The man who founded Interplay in 1984 is no more with interplay. This is a newsbit from OCRegister about the first man from Interplay taking his hat:
Brian Fargo holstered his laser pistol, hung up his rocket helmet and elected not to continue down the multibranching maze of menace.
In other words, Fargo resigned this week as chief executive officer of Interplay, the Irvine video-game company he founded in 1984 by selling games on floppy disks wrapped in plastic baggies.
Interplay President Herve Caen declined to comment on Fargo's resignation but said Interplay would announce the appointment of a CEO within days.
Fargo said the decision to separate from the struggling company has been in the works for months.
Interplay, whose shares closed Wednesday at 50 cents each, down from their 1998 IPO price of $5.50, has lost money in 11 of the past 12 quarters. The company has violated credit agreements with lenders, struggled to get new titles on the shelves and laid off about 25 percent of its staff, leaving 265 employees at last count.
Tensions grew over the past year between Fargo and Titus Interactive, the Paris-based video-game company that supplied the debt-ridden Interplay with cash and installed Caen as president in exchange for its investment. Interplay is in the midst of a shift from PC-only games to games for video consoles like the Xbox and PlayStation.
Fargo spent most of last year trying to engineer a sale of Interplay. Titus, after floating the idea of selling its shares in Interplay, decided instead to increase its stake to 51.5 percent. That, Fargo said, "pretty much ended (the sale)."
Titus also hired Europlay 1, a turnaround firm, to help restructure Interplay, and increased its number of representatives on the company's board.
Fargo said he and Titus weren't always on the same page about plans for the company, and that contributed to his decision to resign.
"It's only when they announced their own intentions (to take control of Interplay), that I realized I can't fight the market and a shareholder with 50 percent of the shares at the same time," Fargo said.
Fargo says he won't miss the pressure of keeping Interplay above water, but he will miss the people and the games.
"We can certainly be criticized for the financial performance, but I don't think anyone can criticize our games," Fargo said. "We continued to put out quality games, games of the year, even with all this going on."
The closing statement is interesting:
"I can tell you one thing," he said. "In the words of Arnold Schwarzenegger, 'I'll be back.'"
We predict more turbulent times for Interplay ahead... | | Source: Voodooextreme |
|
|
Brian Fargo leaves Interplay
