Destineer’s MacSoft business unit announced Monday that it has hired Westlake’s president, Phil Sulak and co-founder, Ken Cobb, to fill senior engineering roles.
It’s the end of an era in Mac gaming: Westlake Interactive emerged in the late 90’s to become the dominant force in Macintosh game conversion development, working with almost every major publisher in the Macintosh game space to bring dozens of A-list games to the platform.
Westlake’s president, Glenda Adams, went on to take an executive role at Aspyr Media Inc., a frequent publishing partner of Westlake’s, when Aspyr decided to form its own internal development studio. Aspyr, based in Austin, Texas like Westlake, ultimately hired most of Westlake’s staff to work in its studio.
The dynamic duo Sulak and Cobb continued to operate as Westlake Interactive, working on Mac game conversions like MacSoft’s Halo and Tropico 2. Now their assimilation is complete, ending one chapter of the Mac game business story, and starting another.
Destineer already has an internal development staff that has created Close Combat: First to Fight, a first-person combat action game that puts you in the role of a leader of a Marine fire-team as you fight close-quarters urban combat in Beirut, Lebanon. The company’s second Close Combat game, entitled Red Phoenix, is currently in development and due out in 2006.
In their new roles at Destineer, Sulak and Cobb will continue to work on Mac game conversions for MacSoft, Destineer’s Mac brand. MacSoft confirmed that Sulak and Cobb will continue to operate out of their Austin, Texas offices, while MacSoft’s base of operations remains further north in Minnesota.
“This puts an exclamation point on our continued dedication to Mac gaming. Especially during the coming period of technical transition in the Macintosh platform, having some of the Mac industry’s most talented engineers gives us extra ability to make our Mac games great,” said MacSoft general manager Al Schilling.
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