Westwood Studios

Westwood Studios, Inc. was an American video game developer, based in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA. It was founded by Brett Sperry and Louis Castle in 1985 as Westwood Associates and was renamed Westwood Studios when it merged with Virgin Games (later Virgin Interactive Entertainment) as their game publisher in 1992. The company was acquired by Electronic Arts as a subsidiary and publisher alongside North American operations of Virgin Interactive in 1998, and they closed their doors and canceled their anticipating projects in 2003.

Westwood Studios was famous for developing real-time strategy, tactical shooter, adventure and role-playing genres, especially the Command & Conquer franchise. It was listed in Guinness World Records for selling more than 10 million copies of Command & Conquer series worldwide.

Games developed

 * Roadwar 2000 (1986)
 * Mars Saga (1988)
 * Questron II (1988)
 * BattleTech: The Crescent Hawk's Inception (1988)
 * Mines of Titan (1989)
 * Hillsfar (1989)
 * A Nightmare on Elm Street (1989)
 * BattleTech: The Crescent Hawk's Revenge (1990)
 * Circuit's Edge (1990)
 * DragonStrike (1990)
 * Eye of the Beholder (1991)
 * Eye of the Beholder II: The Legend of Darkmoon (1991)
 * Dungeons & Dragons: Order of the Griffon (1992)
 * Dungeons & Dragons: Warriors of the Eternal Sun (1992)
 * Dune II (1992)
 * The Legend of Kyrandia (1992)
 * Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos (1993)
 * The Legend of Kyrandia: The Hand of Fate (1993)
 * The Legend of Kyrandia: Malcolm's Revenge (1994)
 * The Lion King (1994)
 * Young Merlin (1994)
 * Command & Conquer (1995)
 * Monopoly (1995)
 * Command & Conquer – The Covert Operations (1996)
 * Command & Conquer: Red Alert (1996)
 * Command & Conquer: Red Alert – Counterstrike (1997)
 * Command & Conquer: Red Alert – The Aftermath (1997)
 * Lands of Lore: Guardians of Destiny (1997)
 * Blade Runner (1997)
 * Command & Conquer: Sole Survivor (1997)
 * Command & Conquer: Red Alert – Retaliation (1998)
 * Dune 2000 (1998)
 * Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun (1999)
 * Lands of Lore III (1999)
 * Recoil (1999) (with Zipper Interactive)
 * Nox (2000)
 * Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun – Firestorm (2000)
 * Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 (2000)
 * Emperor: Battle for Dune (2001)
 * Command & Conquer: Yuri's Revenge (2001)
 * Pirates: The Legend of Black Kat (2002)
 * Command & Conquer: Renegade (2002)
 * Earth & Beyond (2002)

Why they rocked

 * 1) After the release of Dune II, based on Frank Herbert's sci-fi novel, they are best known for creating Command & Conquer: Tiberian Dawn, the spiritual successor and the first installment of the Command & Conquer series of real-time strategy games that revolutionizes the evolution of the RTS genre.
 * 2) Outstanding graphics via generation.
 * 3) Many of these games have good stories, including those of Command & Conquer saga.
 * 4) Interesting soundtrack composed by Frank Klepacki and other music composers of the company.
 * 5) Awesome mechanics of each game like resource gathering in most real-time strategy games.
 * 6) Challenging difficulties and AI.
 * 7) Fluent controls for each game.
 * 8) Amazing acting for entertainment.
 * 9) Updated versions of each old game.
 * 10) Cool visuals for their developed games.

Bad qualities

 * 1) With the success of the other sci-fi-themed RTS game known as StarCraft, Electronic Arts bought Westwood Studios to continue running the Command & Conquer franchise in 1998 and forced them to shut down their operations and merge altogether in 2003.
 * 2) * The final former Westwood employee quit working for Electronic Arts right after the release of Command & Conquer: Generals in 2003 as the first EA-produced Command & Conquer game.
 * 3) * This would cause their publisher EA to be greedier and cease the Command & Conquer franchise by developing the last game of Tiberium universe that was panned by critics, with the cancellation of the 2013 reboot title as the latest entry of the Command & Conquer: Generals universe. So they were considered decisions of EA.