Report: Maxwell Bid For Gizmondo Revealed

A report in British newspaper The Mail On Sunday has suggested that Kevin Maxwell, son of the late media mogul Robert Maxwell, attempted last year to rescue handheld game company Gizmondo Europe from collapse with a new funding offer. The money was to have been offered in exchange for a stake in parent company Tiger Telematics, but the deal fell through when Maxwell was unable to provide the promised amount. Kevin Maxwell narrowly avoided a second bankruptcy himself at the end of last year, after his brother Ian and he were famously declared bankrupt with debts of £400 million ($710m) the first time, shortly after their father’s death in 1991. The Maxwell-owned Mirror Group last became involved in the video game industry through the now defunct UK publishing label Mirrorsoft and U.S. arm Spectrum Holobyte, when Robert Maxwell personally entered the infamous bidding war with Nintendo, for the publishing rights to Tetris, as recounted in noted video game book Game Over. The report regarding Gizmondo is the latest in a serious of increasingly bizarre stories emanating from the collapse of the company, with former executive Stefan Eriksson recently being charged for drunk driving, embezzlement, grand theft and illegal possession of a weapon after destroying a $1 million Ferrari Enzo sports car on the Pacific Coast Highway.