At the beginning of April, venture capital firm Benchmark Capital Europe purchased a 40 percent stake in Codemasters, the British publisher responsible for the American Idol and Colin McRae Rally games.

　　Today, the company announced that it has appointed Rod Cousens as its new CEO and Tony Williams as its new COO. Former president and cofounder David Darling will become the company's chief creative officer and will remain chairman of the company.

　　Rod Cousens was previously CEO of Acclaim Entertainment, a position which he took in 2003 after working for the company for 12 years. His reign was short-lived, because in September of 2004, Acclaim closed its doors. Cousens had been struggling to reopen Acclaim's United Kingdom studios since the closure.

　　Tony Williams, also an ex-Acclaim employee, enjoyed a successful stint as chief operating officer of Take-Two Interactive. During his reign, Take-Two made several important acquisitions, none the least of which was the purchase of BMG Interactive and the Grand Theft Auto license.

　　Since the April purchase of its stock, Codemasters has been positioning itself for future growth into emerging markets, such as mobile phone games. The company will be searching for new games to publish at E3, and CCO David Darling will be helping his staff develop in-house properties for future systems.

　　Codemasters was founded in 1986 by David and Richard Darling. The brothers made a name for their fledgling company by producing a string of games for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum home computer. The company's Dizzy series of games became popular on that system, and it eventually made its way to the NES. The NES release, however, was marred by the quasi-legal Aladdin Deck Enhancer edition of the game.

　　Codemasters initially published its NES games with Camerica, a company that bypassed Nintendo's lockout chip and offered unlicensed games for the system. Codemasters would later develop the famed Game Genie cheat system for the NES.