Melbourne House

Melbourne House (first era)

1977-1987

In 1977, Melbourne House was founded in Melbourne, Australia as a book publishing company. In 1980, they started to distribute computer games created in the USA. That same year, they founded their video game development subsidiary, Beam Software. By 1982, Beam Software had become so successful that book publishing was stopped entirely.

1988-1992

In their later years as an independent company, Melbourne House was struggling financially. Because of this, Virgin Games, who also acquired Mastertronic and created the Mastertronic Group (Virgin Games, Mastertronic, Melbourne House), purchased Melbourne House in 1987. The Mastertronic Group would be renamed to Virgin Mastertronic in 1988. Virgin Mastertronic exported Melbourne House games to the United States. Beam Software became an independent company. Due to a contractual dispute between Beam Software and Mastertronic, no more games were published in 1987. Virgin Games continued to use the Melbourne House name until 1992.

Version with the Virgin logo

Melbourne House (second era)

1997-1999

The Melbourne House trademark was abandoned in 1996 because Virgin Interactive Entertainment didn't renew it. Beam Software immediately bought the trademark to the name and revived the Melbourne House brand as their publishing label. A small number of games were published by Melbourne House between 1997 and 1999.

Infogrames Melbourne House

1999-2003

In 1999, Beam Software sold Melbourne House to Infogrames, and Melbourne House became Infogrames Melbourne House. Melbourne House stopped publishing games entirely and became a game developer only. In 2000, Beam Software stopped game development entirely and became Blaze International Limited, a service for telecommunication, game development and Internet applications.

Melbourne House (third era)

2003-2006

In 2003, due to Infogrames using the name Atari on games, Infogrames Melbourne House was renamed to the original name of Melbourne House again. They were still only a video game developer, however. Melbourne House's last game developed was Test Drive Unlimited in 2006. Melbourne House was sold off to Krome Studios that same year and became the Melbourne headquarters of that company, ending the Melbourne House name for good. In 2010, Krome Studios Melbourne shut down for good, along with their main headquarters in Brisbane, Australia.