The story
Norm Winningstad helped found Thrustmaster in 1990 in Hillsboro, Oregon. By early 1991 the company began advertising the Thrustmaster Weapons Control System in computer magazines. It worked mainly on developing flight control for simulation on IBM Compatible Computers. The company has utilized the HOTAS system for use in computer flight simulation and has modeled some controllers after flight controls of real aircraft. The company made its name in making expensive but high-quality HOTAS controllers in the mid-1990s. By 1995, its sales grew to $15 million and then to $25 million by 1998.
In July 1999, the gaming peripherals operations and brand name was acquired from Thrustmaster for $15 million by the Guillemot Corporation Group of France (which also bought Hercules Computer Technology in 1999, merging the two businesses in a company called Hercules Thrustmaster, with headquarters in Carentoir, France, while keeping the two brands separate).
The new Thrustmaster company gradually extended the product portfolio beyond flight simulation to other simulation peripherals for PC, PlayStation and Xbox consoles:
racing simulation as the T-GT, TS-XW, TX-RW, T300, T150, T80, TH8A gearbox, TSSH Handbrake, BT LED display, and wheels add-ons,
gamepads as GPX, Score-A, T-Wireless, Dual Analog, eSwap, DualShock controller,
gaming headphones as Y-C300 CPX, T.Assault Six, T.Racing Scuderia Ferrari Edition, and T.Flight U.S. Air Force Edition headset.
In 2019, Thrustmaster turnover is €59 million (US$66 million).
From Wikipedia’s article on Thrustmaster, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4