Cryo Interactive Entertainment

Overview

In 1990, the development team Exxos left parent company ERE Informatique and changed its name to Cryo.

Their first game, Extase, was released the following year, published by Virgin. Cryo was not a registered company at this time, just a development team. Their original logo showed what would become the familiar Cryo logo-image (a woman's face, in a cryo-tube), set inside an inverted form of the Exxos logo-image.

In 1992, Cryo Interactive Entertainment became an official company, with three co-directors; Philippe Ulrich, Remi Herbulot and Jean-Martial Lefranc.

They had great success with their next game, Dune, which was published that year, also by Virgin. A wide variety of games followed, including early CD-ROM best-seller MegaRace and interactive adventures like Lost Eden and Atlantis: The Lost Tales. Cryo's games were published either by Virgin or Mindscape until 1996, when Cryo became its own publisher within Europe.

In early 2000 Cryo expanded into Belgium and Holland by acquiring Home Soft. This was soon followed by their new partnership with the Canadian company Dreamcatcher Interactive, in which Cryo became the new majority shareholder.

In July 2002, the company filed for bankruptcy shortly after Frank Herbert's Dune had flopped. Parts of the company were absorbed by DreamCatcher Interactive, who had published Cryo's games in North America since 1996. Successful series like Cryo's Atlantis Series were continued under the new label Atlantis Interactive Entertainment.

In October 2008 MC2-Microïds announced to have acquired the intellectual rights to all of the former Cryo Interactive video games catalogue as well as all of the Cryo brands.


Contributed by Tomer Gabel (4476) on Nov 04, 1999. [revised by : freaky_hardware (627), Sam Jeffreys (3456) and Sciere (122944)].