Thalamus

 1 Saturn House, Calleva Park, Aldermaston, Berks, RG7

I'm pretty sure only four magazine publishers set up software houses; EMAP with Beyond, Argus Press with Argus Press Software, Mirror Group Newspapers with Mirrorsoft and, of course, Newsfield with Thalamus. The surprise is not so much that other publishers didn't dip their toe into the water, it's that Newsfield were so late to the party. Thalamus was founded in 1986, when smaller software houses were being squeezed out of the market and either making the decision to become developers rather than publishers, see Design Design and Realtime, or stepping back from the market completely like Durell and Microsphere.

Newsfield Ltd

1/2 King Street, Ludlow, Shropshire

So we're doing magazines now are we? Well yes, obviously. The tagline of this blog is "seeking out Britain's pioneering software houses," but I've covered Argus Specialist Press and assorted computer manufacturers under the fig leaf justification that those companies did occasionally chuck out a few games. I could have done the same for Newsfield because they spun off a software house called Thalamus but it seems unnecessary. Newsfield were an essential part of the UK software scene in their own right, as were other publishers like Future (AMSTRAD ACTION) or Sportscene/Dennis (YOUR SINCLAIR and YOUR 64), or hardware companies like Romantic Robot (the various Multiface machines) and joystick kings Konix. A whole support industry grew up around software companies like the ecology of a coral reef and to not talk about it is to not tell the whole story.