Destineer’s founder, Peter Tamte, has played important roles both inside and outside of Apple over the years. Prior to Tamte’s founding of Destineer last year, he was an executive vice president at Bungie Software, makers of Oni, Myth, and Marathon. Tamte left Bungie after the company was acquired by Microsoft Corp. in June of 2000. Prior to his experience at Bungie, Tamte managed worldwide consumer marketing at Apple. And prior to his tenure at Apple, Tamte was the founder of MacSoft, the popular Mac game and application publisher — now a division of Infogrames.
Comments were first made about Destineer’s existence by Microsoft games Vice President Ed Fries at last year’s Macworld Expo. Fries indicated to the crowd attending Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ keynote address that Microsoft would work with the new company to produce Mac game conversions of their popular titles. Since then, Tamte has confirmed plans to release three Microsoft-licensed Mac games — Age of Empires 2, Flight Simulator 2002, and Links LS 2002. Beyond that, however, most aspects of Destineer’s operation — right down to the company’s name — have been a jealously guarded secret.
Destineer’s announcement today confirmed that the company is creating “next generation original games” for Mac OS, Windows, and as-yet unspecified video game consoles — an assertion that Tamte first made when he talked with MacCentral at last year’s Macworld Expo event in New York City. The company’s original games are utilizing a proprietary 3D technology that Destineer’s own engineers have created. Beyond that tantalizing piece of news, however, specific details are still a bit sketchy.
Destineer is creating two distinct brands that will be used to market its efforts. The company’s original content will be marketed under the “Destineer Studios” label, while its Windows to Macintosh game conversions will be marketed under the “Bold” label.
Tamte explained that Destineer’s name is meant to evoke a sense of adventure.
“We hope playing our games will give people the exhilaration of discovering something new. We’ve had a team of engineers and artists building our own 3D engine since January to make sure our original games look and play differently than other games,” said Tamte.
Bold has a different goal, Tamte explained.
“Age of Empires II, Links, Flight Simulator, and other Microsoft games are some of the most important and popular games ever created, and Microsoft has many more games like these coming. Microsoft is interested in making sure their games are available on the Macintosh, and we want to give users ‘Mac-in-tized’ versions of these great games,” said Tamte.
Specific ship dates for at least two of Destineer’s three announced Macintosh titles is expected to be released shortly, but it’ll be a while before the company tips its hand about its own home-rolled games. Tamte said that details on Destineer’s original content won’t be unveiled until next year sometime. A Web site isn’t active at the moment but is expected to be running in late July.