David McElhatten was the president of Philips Media Games based in Los Angeles. We managed to pin him for an interview and we managed to get answers to a couple of questions.
Hello Mr McElhatten, please tell us about yourself, your Career at Philips, the work as President of Philips Media Games, any specific projects you were personally involved with and your present career.
"First, let me say thank for your interest in CD-i. I gave eight years of my life to the creation and production of CD-i software and I very much believed in the technology and the promise of the format. At the height of CD-i activity, hundreds of multi media professionals and interactive designers worldwide were immersed in the design and production of this innovative medium and I was proud to be part of the groundbreaking effort.In 1988, I was approached by a publishing arm of Philips, American Interactive Media and I joined them initially in the initial capacity of Production Manager where I was responsible for our Los Angeles studio. What got me most interested in CD-i initially was the promise of true digital video and full motion video, though we were still years away from making this a commercial reality. Shortly thereafter I was promoted to Vice President of Design, then Senior Vice President of Production for the same entity which by then changed its name to Philips Interactive Media. By the mid 90's Philips Interactive Media branched out and we become publishers of CD ROM and CD-i and I headed up the Philips Media Games Division in the role as President for a period of two years.
In this role my priority was to build a significant games publishing label and this was accomplished by emphasizing production in Europe. Indeed, during this time, I had a flat in London and was spending an equal amount of time in England and the European continent as I was in Los Angeles. The reason for this European emphasis was due to the fact that the European marketing of CD-i was doing so much better than the American activity which was sub-standard and never capable of reaching any significant penetration. As a result we found the development community much more receptive to CD-I publishing in Europe as well and frankly development was not only better and faster, it was also cheaper.
Another factor on the European emphasis was Philps. In America at this point in time, Philips had very little market share in any of their consumer electronics activity with the exception of the "Maganvox" brand. In fact few Americans in the late 80's even knew of he Philips brand yet, CD-i was initially marketed with this branding as Philips was determined to make their presence known in the States.
Today it is interesting to note that the Philips brand due to a very effective television ad campaign and millions of dollars spent on other media advertising over the last 5-7 years has become a very well known brand, but in the 80' s and early 90's, Philips was without much of an identity and it was a very confusing moniker to many Americans as this name was also shared by a major petroleum company (Phillips 66) and by a digestion aid for upset stomachs! (Phillips Milk of Magnesia)"
After you parted company with Philips Media Games did you follow the CD-i later in its lifespan from 1996 onwards. In retrospect why do you believe the CD-i ultimately failed to make an impact on the market.
"When I left Philips Media Games I still had a number of good friends and colleagues associated with CD-I. I believed that I helped build a fantastic team and certainly I had an interest in this team succeeding. However, speaking candidly, I left Phiilps for one key reason: I knew that despite any well intentioned efforts of this great group of Philips insiders and outside game developers, we were not going to suceed due to sub standard marketing and inadequate resources being devoted to the drive the key revenue generating products. Philips spread their bet across a wide variety of titles when it was the games activity along with products from the Home and Family Label (typically edutainment and games for very young children) that were the key source of revenue.
Early on CD-I Golf which was a bundled with the CD-i player in some markets and CD-I Gambling were the best selling titles. Cd-I Pinball was also a very profitable title during this era as well. Then a few years later Voyeur and Burn:Cycle did extremely well, but they never really got their fare share of marketing dollars to really drive the business even after they were converted to the CD ROM format.
So much of my tenure as President of Philips Media Games was trying to ensure concurrent production of CD-i and CD - ROM for key titles and to help secure the necessary marketing comittments (which was a separate group from the publishing label), and while I saw some significant progress, ultimately I knew it would not be enough. Thus, after building a crack team and develping key relationships primiarly in Europe, I knew that ultimately I was going to be asked to help dismantle the organaization and to me this was something that I did not want to be a part of. Therefore, I left the company in late May of 1996 right after the E3 expo and it wasn't long after that timeframe that things wound down fairly quickly.
So that's a long version of the story, but it hope it sheds light to basic set of issues plaguing the compact disc interactive format. In short, This format simply could not be all things to all people. What CD-I was great at was providing fun, media rich games and kid's titles on a device that was also capable of playing CD audio and CD Videos. It was never going to compete with the Sony Playstation but it was capable of delivering great games for all ages. It was a versatile format but Philips attempted to go too wide in its appeal with too few marketing dollars appropriated to the key titles.
In summary I nothing but respect for a vast majority of my colleagues during this experience and we were trying to do something that hadn't been done before. We certainly did create some of the best multi media properties and games of that era and many of the talented people that I worked with have gone on to great success and are still in the interactive media industry in one form or the other."
[Thanks, David McElhatten, Devin, Merijn]