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Mark Beaumont, a 28-year veteran of video game publishing who most recently served as COO of Capcom North America and Europe, and who had served at Activision and Midway, passed away today.

Chris Remo, Blogger

February 23, 2010

1 Min Read

Mark Beaumont, a 28-year veteran of video game publishing who most recently served as COO of Capcom North America and Europe, passed away today. The news first began circulating among industry figures' Twitter posts, and MCV later reported Beaumont died of a heart attack this morning. Beaumont began his video game industry career at Atari in 1982, but joined Activision in 1983 and stayed with the company for five years, becoming the general manager of its Activision Entertainment brand. He went on to serve for several years in an executive vice president roles at Time Warner Interactive, which was later sold to Midway. In between those various major publisher positions, Beaumont worked for smaller outfits including Data East, Mindscape, and Psygnosis. Beaumont ended up becoming an SVP at Midway in 1999, working in the company's publishing department until 2005, before moving to Capcom. He rose from the position of SVP for Capcom's operations in the Americas, to heading up the company's publishing across all of North America, South America, and Europe. One of the industry's longest-serving executives, Beaumont observed and participated in the video game medium's incredible evolution from some of its earliest stages. "As it grows, you bring in a larger variety of people, and individual segments within the installed base also grow," Beaumont said in a 1987 interview with Compute! magazine. "We're moving beyond action/arcade type run-and-shoot games and moving toward giving somebody a full-blown experience."

About the Author(s)

Chris Remo

Blogger

Chris Remo is Gamasutra's Editor at Large. He was a founding editor of gaming culture site Idle Thumbs, and prior to joining the Gamasutra team he served as Editor in Chief of hardcore-oriented consumer gaming site Shacknews.

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