GTE Interactive Media
GTE Interactive Media was founded by Richard E. Robinson back in 1990. The company was founded as a division of GTE Vantage. That was a wholly owned subsidiary of the now out of use telecommunication supplier GTE. The company was based in Carlsbad, California and the division’s focus was on creating videos of interactive television programs. In addition, the company had also another focus which was creating home console cartridges, interactive video game products for arcade machines and CD-ROMs. All those products were developed and published under the GTE Entertainment brand.
History
We mentioned earlier that the company was founded back in 1990. However, the company was originally founded under the name GTE ImagiTrek and the name was changed in 1994 to GTE Interactive Media. The vice president has made few statements where he mentioned that this division was viewed as a complementary addition to GTE’s plans. By those plans he meant creating broadband video services networks. One year later, the company signed a contract for partnership with Nintendo for creating arcade games and online networking. Moreover, after the signed partnership, not only a month has passed, they previewed its first title, FX Fighter in Las Vegas at Consumer Electronics Show. The same year, the company has grown and had the highest number of employees in their history.
Sometime later, the company started having problems in the video game market putted a pinch on GTE Interactive Media because of deregulation. That resulted into firing employees from the division. GTE, the parent company of the division, planned to end its own content development in favor of feeding its networks with the quickly growing marked of third party content. Moreover, the company has failed to find a partner or a buyer in order to help their business. Because the search for a partner failed, the company officially announced in January 1997 that they would fire 85 workers and will end all of their operations on March 14, 1997.
With that announcement and after firing the employees, the division was officially defunct on March 14, 1997. According to some reports, back in 1996 the company had the highest number of employees which was 120. However, only a year later, the division was officially closed.