Thrustmaster

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Thrustmaster Logo

[edit] Company Info

Thrustmaster, is a designer and developer of joysticks, game controllers, and steering wheels for PCs and video gaming consoles alike. It has many licensing agreements with third party, prestigious brands such as Ferrari®, TOP GUN™, Beretta® and Splinter Cell® as well as licensing some products under XBOX license. Very recently teaming up with Skype, Thrustmaster has developed a new range of communication products appealing to the growing internet telephone market. Currently, they have two packs of accessories available: the Internet Phone&Video Kit and Internet Phone Kit

Thrustmaster's Goals (http://www.thrustmaster.com/eng/companyinfos.php) are to:

Fully exploit the possibilities offered by wireless technology,
Benefit from the launch of next-generation game consoles.

[edit] History

The neutrality of this article or section may be compromised by weasel words.
You can help Wikipedia by improving weasel-worded statements.

Founded in 1992, it worked mainly on developing flight control for simulation on IBM Compatible Computers. The company has utilized the HOTAS system for use in computer flight simulation and has modeled some controllers after flight controls of real aircraft. The company made their name in making the expensive but high quality HOTAS controllers in middle 1990s.

In 1999, Thrustmaster became a part of the Guillemot Corporation Group. (Guillemot's Official site: [1])

Between 1999-2002 Thrustmaster released several new but low quality gaming products, that more or less ended the company's supremacy in high end gaming market. Cheap, poor quality joysticks, with forays into FPS gaming market and releasing strange peripherals for boxing and snowboarding games were not successful either.

Currently one of their most expensive joysticks is the HOTAS Cougar, an exacting reproduction of both the throttle and stick that is used in the F-16, Block 40/50. However, the Cougar joystick suffers from severe quality problems and it is largely regarded as inferior product. Many independent companies have produced replacement components for the Cougar, that make it well working and lasting piece of equipment, but usually with at double, even triple the price of the original purchase. With large number of returns with Cougar, Thrustmaster seems to be out of PC high end game controller market.

Recently Thrustmaster have expanded to create peripherals for the Microsoft Xbox, Sony PlayStation 2, and the Sony PSP.