Last year we contacted again Tom Steenbergen, who was the head of the publishing activities behind Philips Media Benelux. The headquarters of Philips Media were located in Eindhoven, The Netherlands. We had contact before since 2005, to talk about his involvement in CD-i and his responsibilities at Philips Media. Its publishing activities were headed by Tom Steenbergen, who was responsible for the budget and choices in what Philips Media Benelux was going to release for both CD-i and CD-ROM. Between 1994 and 1997 you can find his name in a lot of credits of CD-i titles including Tatjana on CD-i, the SPC Vision titles like The Apprentice and Lucky Luke, but also the Philips Media Interactive Encyclopedia.
In 1997 Philips Media stopped its publishing business and the household of Philips Media was sold to Infogrames. Infogrames had a subsidiary of its distribution activities in The Netherlands: Bomico Entertainment. Bomico was in principle the former distribution channel of Philips Media Benelux.
Tom Steenbergen decided to start his own company together with Lost Boys Interactive, with the name Softmachine. Together with Sander van der Meer, another big name in the publishing world of CD-i.
Tom is a popular author of the Oor Pop Encyclopedia: "Publishing Multi Media products on CD-Rom, DVD and Internet and book publications. Best known products are: Oor Pop-Encyclopedie, Anne Frank House, Top 40 Hitdossier, Mega Charts Hitparade, Platenverzameldisc, Rembrandt the Etcher, Radio 538 Webstation, various casual games, Big Brother The Game (worldwide). Publisher of DVD's by Ella Fitgerald, Quincy Jones, Lou Reed, Muddy Waters, Hank WIlliams, Frank Sinatra, Leonard Bernstein. Database provider and editor for the book publications Oor Pop-Encyclopedie 2008, 2010, 2012 and 2014."
Softmachine started to continue focusing on CD-i and CD-ROM, but the only CD-i project that was still alive was The Lost Ride which was initiated by Lost Boys Interactive in 1996 (as Formula). This project was developed together with Philips after experimenting heavily with the Scalectric system: Software tools to seamless combine MPEG video sequences together on CD-i which made it possible in principle to generate endless loops of video material. A perfect start for an interactive roller coaster, like in The Lost Ride. As Softmachine was both owned by Lost Boys and Tom Steenbergen, a release on CD-i was secured in 1998. Sales were too low and the title was only released in The Netherlands.
Before publisher at Philips Media, Tom was managing director at Polygram, a Philips subsidiary since 1987, but already a Philips-Siemens venture since 1972.
It is amazing to see what Tom has collected over the years. I've met a lot of people who were involved in CD-i over the years, but I've never seen a huge archive like this. He showed me very valuable sales numbers, as well as a full fax history, internal memo's by Philips Media and software deals from the past. Including unreleased projects, which of course will be covered here in the future.
I discussed with him not to publish the sales numbers, as this might still be sensitive information.
Tom Steenbergen was the key person to grant money to CD-i developers to publish their software on CD-i. He focused less on pure gaming but more on a combination of edutainment like Lingo (made by SPC Vision) and the Medical Encyclopedia. He made some focused CD-i titles on soccer like Euro '96 (with Lost Boys) and he made a few yearbooks on CD-i in dutch: 'Dit was 1994 and Dit was 1995'. He continued this line on CD-ROM until 1998.
Softmachine as a publisher was active until 2005, but we learnt it is still active today, it just doesn't publish anything anymore. It has a rich history that was Philips Media and he told us stories of sales man that had interesting info on CD-i games including our famous Discworld CD-i title. (More on that later) - Tom was confident however that Discworld was never published but it was actually a completed product and even shown to customers.
The development of Lost Boys is described in a new book by Tom Lenting, something we will review here soon. But the link of Lost Boys and Tom Steenbergen is not mentioned here. I believe Softmachine was an interesting piece of history in the development of Lost Boys (and at a later point in Guerilla Games). It goes back in the belief of Lost Boys in CD-i: They developed several titles on CD-i together with Philips Media, as described very nice in this book about Guerilla Games.
[To be continued]
[Thanks, Tom Steenbergen]