Phoenix Games B.V.

Phoenix Games B.V. was founded by Willie Horden in 2002, with a goal of selling up to 4 to 5 million games per year.^[8] Instead of relying on traditional games distribution channels, Phoenix's games were sold at newsagents and convenience stores at £6.99 to £12.99 per game depending on the platform.^[9] Phoenix published one of the last PlayStation games—a shooter game compilation entitled Shoot—in 2005.

On 4 November 2002 they announced their partnership with Japanese company Altron, and Italian developer NAPS team. In December 2002 Phoenix announced that they had acquired the publishing rights to Dragon's Lair, Space Ace, Who Shot Johnny Rock? and Mad Dog McCree from Digital Leisure in Canada.^[10] In February 2003 they announced that their games will distributed by Just in the UK, Joag in Italy, SGDiffusion in France and N-Tec in Hungary. The company also put up booths at E3 2004 and 2005 to display their games.^[11]

In 2003 Phoenix announced that they partnered with an unnamed UK-based developer for "a range of super-budget titles" for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox, sold for £9.99. Phoenix Games UK CEO Paul Share stated that they no longer found it necessary to license and localise games from Japanese developers, instead relying on British development studios to produce games for the company.^[12]

In 2013, the German Videospielarchiv held an art exhibition named "Coverstrophen" at that year's GamesCom, where they showed cover arts for many of their PlayStation 2 games.^[3]

Despite having limited coverage in mainstream gaming publications, the company earned a negative reputation for the exceptionally poor quality of their games,^[4][13] which have generally been regarded as "bargain bin" shovelware^[14] comparable to budget-priced titles from System 3 Software under the Play It label,^[12] while their interactive activity centre games based on adaptations of fairy tales and mockbusters of popular cartoons by the German animation studio Dingo Pictures were subject to widespread ridicule and mockery on YouTube and spawned various internet memes.^[1]

The European localization of Touge 3—developed by Cave and Atlus and released by Phoenix as Road Rage 3—was somewhat better received, though it was also criticized by gaming publications such as the Official PlayStation Magazine for its subpar gameplay and graphics.^[15] The same is true for the PlayStation 1 port of Sonic Wings Special.^[16]

• Official website (archived)
• Game list as of November 2008 (archived)

• Phoenix Games, an unrelated board game publisher from 1978 to 1981.
• List of video games notable for negative reception