This page is a quick simple and short guide to just a few of those all important games developers.

Activision was founded in 1979 and was arguably the first company to promote third party software and then give the developers a cut in profits, everything before that was developed in house (first party). Although ther eis also popular opinion that EA were in fact the first company to do this. In 2007 Activision acquired Vivendi Games and is today known as Activision Blizzard. They have produced games such as Guitar Hero, Call of Duty, Pitfall and Doom 3.

U.S Gold was a British game software publisher and developer from the early eighties, 1984 to be precise to the mid nineties. Whilst it did not last too many years it is still a household name amongst retro gamers. The core business was to develop games for Atari and and Commodore whilst later on making ports for the likes of the Spectrum and Amstrad CPC. By the early nineties business was booming but one licensing deal fell through...Lucas Arts....this along with other failed licensing deals threatened their income. Here the waters became murky.

The business was split into three sections the main part being CentreGold Group, but the three areas of the business could not last long and in 1996 Eidos Interactive acquired CentreGold Group. Eidos did not stick with the core business of CentreGold and sold it off and they then discontinued the U.S Gold brand. 1996 saw the last ever game with the U.S Gold logo attached, Olympic Games: Atlanta 1996 for the PS, Saturn, 3DO and PC

EA (Electronic Arts) has arguably one of the most illustrious histories around. In 1982 Trip Hawkins (who went on to create the company 3DO) set up EA and at the time became a god send for small time developers. They promoted and refined their ideas then sold them to a mass audience. It was the first time a development company had promoted third party software whilst still giving them a cut in the profits. (Although it is said that Activision were in fact the first company to do this) However by the late 80's the market around EA began to change favouring in-house development .

EA began to lose money and also lost Trip Hawkins. The company was suffering and they needed to change direction. They also began to develop in-house which would in turn impact on third-party developers. For EA themselves though it would prove their saviour as they went on to become one of today's top publishers whilst Trip Hawkins 3DO product fell by the side. By the late 90's some saw EA as a money machine and nothing more as game series like FIFA became almost the same on each release, lots of money for little effort. However by 2007 the public started to see that EA were finally making efforts to rectify that and continue to be hugely successful today.

'Eidos Interactive' to be precise is only part of the Eidos Group and is a subsidiary of SCi Entertainment and is based in England. It only became part SCi in 2005 after a serious of attempted take over bids by several companies. Its best known releases are Tomb Raider, Hitman, Deus EX and Commandos. It was founded in 1990 mainly aimed at the Acorn Archimedes line of computers. In 1995 it made several acquisitions including that of Domark, famous for Championship Manager.

In 1996 it acquired CentreGold formerly known as U.S. Gold before eventually being taken over itself by SCi. In 2007 SCi confirmed speculation that an attempt had been made to buy them out, but in 2008 talks had been officially halted causing shares to plummet.

Microsoft's games development team is known as Microsoft Game Studios and focuses on publishing. It is wholly owned by Microsoft Corp. unlike Nintendo's first party developers where they only own a controlling stake in each subsidiary company.

The studio publish for PC and the Xbox range. It publishes games for several wholly owned Microsoft first party development companies such as Lionhead and Rare. Rare was acquired from Nintendo in 2002. It has though also published for third-party developers such as Bioware and Bizzare.

Famously they acquired Bungie studios in 2001 where the exceptional Halo series of games was born but in 2007 Bungie parted from Microsoft.

Domark was a British based games development company and mostly made games for home computers during the eighties. In 1995 it was taken over by Eidos. It produced many games including the famous Championship Manager series. It also produced a game in 1984 called Eurekal where they offered a prize of £25,000 to the person who completed the game first.

Most people believe that Nintendo make their own first party games in-house. They do. To a certain extent. They have a controlling stake in several subsidiaries that make games purely for Nintendo. These companies have made games such as Mario, Zelda, Animal crossing, Metroid Prime and many others. These subsidiaries go by such names as Monolith Soft, Nintendo Software Technology Corporation, Nintendo Software planning and development and Retro studios amongst several others.

When it comes to Nintendo consoles there is a history of great games released by Nintendo, but for some absurd reason third party developers just don't produce quality games on Nintendo products. This is probably in part because the majority of third party developers concentrate their business on more 'hard core' games. Whereas Nintendo focus on 'Soft core' games so third party developers don't put too much effort into their products for Nintendo.

Codemasters is another British run developer and was established in 1985. They established themselves mainly in the ZX Spectrum market developing the 'Dizzy' series of games although they also developed for the Vic 20, Amiga, Electron and BBC Micro amongst others. Nintendo were less than pleased with Codemasters for many years because Codemasters published their games through Camerica which by-passed Nintendo's lock out chip which enabled them to release unlicensed NES games. They also released the Game Genie for the NES which meant players could now cheat their way through Nintendo's games.

More recently though Codemasters are known for their games including the TOCA series, Colin McRae Rally series and the illfated Sensible Soccer 2006 release. Codemasters more recently won the licence over Sony for the rights to develop the F1 series. They release their frist offering in 2009.

Originally called Konami Corporation it was founded in Japan in 1969 originally as a jukebox rental and repair business. Now Konami are perhaps best known for producing video games, but they also produce slot machines, toys and trading cards which does not sound a million miles from how Nintendo started out. In 1973 it became Konami Industry Co. and turned its attentions to arcade machines although they failed to release any until 1978.

They began to produce games for PC's and console in 1982. Thanks to third party restrictions by Nintendo Konami formed several subsidiaries to get around the Nintendo rules. However Nintendo relaxed its rules by the early nineties and as a result Konami shut down those subsidiaries. In 2003 Konami shut down its arcade development arm due to heavy losses.

Konami is known for games such as Metal Gear Solid, Castlevania, Silent Hill, Contra, Metal Gear, ISS, Pro Evo and many other classic titles. But for all those classics in 2005 it still remained only the fourth largest games developer in Japan behind Nintendo, Sega and Namco.

French Owned Ubisoft was established in 1986 and was quick to establish production deals with the likes of EA. It was not actually until 1994 that Ubisoft created their first in-house studio. In 2004 EA purchased almost 20% of Ubisoft, seen as a hostile act by the management. However since then Ubisoft has been making acquisitions of its own. Ubisoft is known for games such as Assassins Creed, Far Cry, Harvest Moon, Prince of Persia, the Tom Clancy series and also currently holds the controlling rights to the Driver franchise.