Thrustmaster

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[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

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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 real F-16 fighter aircraft. Customers have been sharply divided over the Cougar. Some appreciated the rugged all-steel construction, exacting potentiometers, and numerous programming possibilities, and have suffered no failures. Others complained of severe quality problems, citing play in the centering springs and the tendency of the speedbrake switch to break due to a manufacturing defect (this has been fixed on later serial numbers), as well as the high price compared to their competitor's products. Many independent companies have produced replacement components for the Cougar to address these issues. These include redesigned gimbals that center more firmly, contactless potentiometers to replace worn originals, and even several force-controlled mods that make the stick sense pressure without moving (like a real F-16 stick). Besides fixing complaints with the original product, these aftermarket parts have the potential to extend the life of the Cougar well past the time when Thrustmaster stops supporting it, but usually at double, even triple the price of the original purchase. However, the market for such mods tends to be limited, and many customers seem to be happy enough with their Cougars as they came from the factory.

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