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Midway spin-out targets Japan

A fledgling video games design firm has landed a contract with one of the biggest entertainment companies in America just months after its launch.

Gateshead’s Atomhawk Design was spun out of the now-collapsed Midway Games site on Tyneside last year and has already established a global network of clients.

Among its new customer base is one of the three largest entertainment companies in America while it has also broken into the German video games market - an industry that is notoriously tough to break into for developers.

Meanwhile, despite a modest workforce of a handful of former Midway employees, the firm is also working for one of the largest entertainment publishing businesses in France.

Atomhawk - which designs artwork for use in games - will head to the US next month for the Games Developers Conference San Francisco 2010 as it bids for new contracts.

Company founder Cumron Ashtiani also hopes to use his experience of working alongside Nintendo in his lengthy career in games development, to target the lucrative Japanese market.

He said: “The key thing is that we are looking to do business globally. We find the connections we have made in the US are through relationships with the people from Midway. A lot of old colleagues across the pond give support to other companies and have picked us up. Germany is the number one purchaser of video games in Europe and is tough one to crack, things are very insular.

“They make their own games, so for contract work to come out to us is pretty good and people are coming to little Gateshead to get premium design work.”

“Japan is a creative powerhouse in the video games market but it’s a tough market to get into, however, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to do more business globally.”

Midway’s office in Gateshead closed last year with the loss of 74 jobs after its American parent company fell into financial difficulty.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .