Peter Doctorrow was the last president of Philips Media Games. CD-i member Merijn asked him about our several lost CD-i titles but he didn't seem to have a lot of knowledge about them. This would fall in place with most of the stories we hear from that time. Most projects were killed without much looking at those titles.. Below you will find some stories told by Peter:
Peter: "I was not hired to close the company down. As you may recall, and can surely confirm with some research, the Chairman of Philips Electronics was ousted (as I recall) sometime in the summer of 1996, after I had already joined the company, and was replaced with Mr. Cor Boonstra. Mr. Boonstra was brought in ostensibly to bring some new life to the company and get the stock price moving up once again, as it had languished with little gains for some time during the end of the reign of the previous Chairman.
I joined Philips Media on the Monday of the week of E3 here in Los Angeles. I replaced a guy named Mr. Dave McElhatten. He left the company to pursue other interests and I was brought in to be the President of the Games group reporting directly to Mr. Hank Kaplan. Mr. Kaplan in turn reported to a Dutch gentleman named Richard DeLange, who lived in the London area and was the Chairman of several companies, including ours.
It was Mr. Boonstra's strategy to return to the core businesses of Philips and that did not include CD-i or the software being developed to support it. Mr. Kaplan did not want to continue in his role if the sole objective of the company was to sell off the intellectual property and the distribution companies in Europe. As a consequence, Mr. Kaplan left the company and I was promoted to the position of President of all of Philips Media here in the United States. In this position, I had reporting to me not only the Games group but also the other divisions of Kids/Education software, enhanced music and Video/Film on CD-i.
At that time, Philips Media had acquired distribution companies in Germany (Bomico), France (Ecudis) and the U.K. (Leisuresoft). Following my promotion and the directions from Mr. DeLange (my new boss), I was charged with the responsibility of finding potential suitors for the company assets. With the years of experience I had in the business and the wide-ranging contacts I had, both in the U.S. and Europe, I did finally find several companies who were truly interested in the intellectual property and distribution capabilities. In the end, we did a deal with Infogrames and they acquired the assets of the company.
Unfortunately, as I mentioned previously, as a part of that sale, all of the U.S. employees were terminated as were most all of the those in Europe, the majority of whom worked out of the London office. The distribution companies remained intact and continued to function as separate entities headed by the Infogrames staff, based in Lyon, France.
I could go on and on as to the intricacies of the sale and recount anecdotes of the events leading up to that final disposition, but I think it would not be particularly meaningful and would surely compromise certain confidences which I do not feel at liberty to do. Therefore, I will be
happy to provide additional information in response to particular questions you might have. Baring that I wish you luck in your endeavors."
[Thanks, Peter Doctorrow, Merijn]