A Gartner Report
The Mizurian Corporation
What is now the Mizzurian Corporporation first appeared as a small video games company, Mizurian Games Inc, in 1996 with the launch of its first software title “Arkonan”.
Arkonan, a graphical RPG adventure game proved to be a
massive hit in the fledgling PC games industry with sales exceeding a
million units world wide in its first year.. Several successful
titles followed, and it’s biggest success to date, ”Nexus” , another
graphical RPG title, was
launched in December 2003.
Whilst the first expansion launched in late
2004 was a success, the second expansion, released after several delays
in late 2006 failed to make a significant impact. 3 further titles
released to both the PC and console markets, also failed to ignite
the market, but have proved to be steady sellers.
Whilst initially a video games company, the company has diversified
significantly since 2007, changing it's name in 2008 to The Mizzurian
Corporation.
The rapid diversification appears to coincide with the reappearance of one of its founders, Ms Cordelia Chan, following a 4 year unexplained absence. At the same time the company gained a substantial capital injection of some $250M effectively making it a private company under the control of Ms Chan whose share holding jumped to 67% overnight.
The first of it's diversification acquisitions
was a small specialist computer producer Cyberworks of Virginia
followed less than a month later by
KLS ltd of Iowa, a minor producer of components for the defense
industry. Both of these companies benefitted significantly from the
aquisition and cash injection, have made significant progress on a
number of DoD studies, and more remarkable are still under the
day-to-day control of the original directors.
In early 2009 2 more acquisitions followed, Micornet Ltd and Numinor Ltd, the first specializing in the production of components for mobile devices, and the second a fledgling but highly innovative player in the virtual reality market. Its most recent acquisition in January 2011, Cortalan, surprised the market completely, being a specialist in the biosensor, and artificial limb market. In each case Mizzurian appears to have gone out of it's way to both retain and enhance the original staff and significantly expand their research and development programs.
In conjunction with it's acquisition program, there has been a
significant increase and diversification of its own in-house portfolio
and structure, making it a Global multi-national. What is potentially
most unusual from an International Investment perspective is that the
majority of it's divisions are registered outside of the USA, the
largest, Mizzurian Global, being registered in Gaberone, Botswana.
Whilst Mizzurian Global appears to own and manage all of Mizzurian's
numerous and diverse Real Estate Holdings, all of it's own and
outsourced Security Services are registered as a subsubsidury of
Mizzuran Europe, registered in Utrect, Netherlands. Whilst Mizzurian
Global owns the Software Division, Spaient Services (which appears to
be some form of fledeging AI Research Division), and its Cyberware
division, its Electronics and Processor Divisions are owned by it's
Asian Subsiduary. There are also once or two oddities in the portfolio
of whole owned subsiduries, especially those held by the US division,
the most notable being Bay Ship Building in Sturgeon Bay,
Wisconsin.
This year’s Mizzurian Expo (May 2nd-5th) could turn out to be a
historic event, as Mizzurian appears to have staked its complete
future on the success of its recently announced (December 21 2012)
BlackShadow cyberdeck, claimed to be the world’s first virtual reality
console and its new MMO Disjunction,
a fully immersive Scifi sandbox
universe
where participants can do anything from fight solo as a soldier to
captain the largest Titan.
In a world where every other games company and technology producer leans over backwards to gain media coverage, Mizzurian has done exactly the opposite. Apart from the single, but very impressive, 5 minute trailer for the game there have been no further press releases, and despite the best efforts of investigative journalists and games commentators nothing relating to the game has come to the surface. This is either a very clever con or a master stoke in marketing as tickets of any description for the Expo sold out within a matter of hours of their availability on 2nd January this year. Even amongst the techno press pack, competition has become rife over the limited number of tickets available for the opening ceremony with reports of tickets trading for in excess of $200,000. There are unconfirmed reports of thefts, muggings, and blackmail plots in an attempt to garner one of the tickets.