Turtle Beach Corp

Early history: 1975–2005

Turtle Beach has roots dating back to 1975 in Elmsford, New York, founded as "Turtle Beach Softworks" by Roy Smith and Robert Hoke. The company's first product was a graphical editing system that supported the breakthrough Ensoniq Mirage sampling keyboard. The Mirage was the first low cost sampling device that allowed musicians to play realistic choirs, pianos, horns, and other instruments in their performances. The software, called "Vision", connected the Mirage to a PC and used the PC's screen and graphics to make the programming and editing of sounds much easier. Ensoniq decided to resell Vision through their dealer network and Turtle Beach Softworks became a profitable company.In 1988, Turtle Beach began to work on developing its first hardware product, a hard disk-based audio editing system. Among the first of its kind, the product was named the "56K digital recording system" and was released in 1990. In 1990, Turtle Beach began developing its second PC sound card. This card used high quality A/D and D/A, a high quality synthesizer from eMu, and an onboard DSP chip. This product was called "MultiSound." The MultiSound product competed with more established products of the day from Advanced Gravis , Ad Lib, Inc. , Creative Labs, and Media Vision. CCRMA's Music Kit and DSP Tools running on Motorola 56001 DSP, initially developed for NeXTcube system, was later ported on NeXTSTEP with Turtle Beach Fiji/Pinnacle DSP cards.In December 1996, the company was sold by ICS to Voyetra Technologies in Yonkers, New York. The new combined company would eventually be known as Voyetra Turtle Beach. Voyetra was originally founded by Carmine Bonanno and Fred Romano in 1975 as Octave-Plateau, one of the original companies included in the MIDI standard, and had developed drivers and software for nearly every sound card manufacturer in the world during the early 1990s. As Voyetra Turtle Beach, the company sold millions of sound cards to Dell in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

2005–2013: rebranding as a headset manufacturer

In 2005, the company released its first Ear Force gaming headset model, the AXP. The headset was geared toward computer gamers. Over the following years, the company began focusing primarily on its lines of PC and console gaming headsets, steering away from sound cards almost completely . By 2007, Voyetra Turtle Beach had released several headset models including those that were wireless and those that had surround sound capability. Its models were initially designed specifically for the Xbox 360, PC, or Nintendo Wii. Turtle Beach released its first pair of headphones designed specifically for the PlayStation 3 in 2009.In October 2010, Stripes Group acquired a majority position in Turtle Beach. In 2011, the company released a limited-edition, officially licensed Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 headset. In 2012, it entered into a partnership with Major League Gaming that saw the release of headsets specifically designed for tournament gaming and consumer headsets that had official MLG branding. The same year, Turtle Beach acquired Lygo International, a United Kingdom-based distributor and supplier of gaming accessories that had already been Turtle Beach's exclusive distributor and support center for the UK and Ireland since January 2011.

2013–present: Parametric merger and eSports sponsorships

In 2013, Turtle Beach began working on a deal that would eventually see them merge with the San Diego-based audio technology manufacturer, Parametric Sound Corporation, in January 2014. Parametric had gone public in 2010. In April 2014, the company's name was changed to Turtle Beach Corporation, it began trading under the stock ticker symbol "HEAR," and opened a new corporate headquarters in San Diego, California. Parametric's "UltraSound" technology, which uses speakers to direct sounds only to specific areas, also came under the purview of Turtle Beach.In 2014 and 2015, the company released official Titanfall and Star Wars Battlefront-branded headsets. It also began releasing a collection of other gaming accessories like keyboards, computer mice, and mousepads. In 2016, the company entered a partnership with OpTic Gaming, an esports organization, for the team to use its Elite Pro Tournament Gaming Headset. Turtle Beach also released the Stream Mic for users who broadcast from their consoles and PC. In 2017, it released the first headsets that could connect directly to the Xbox One console wirelessly. The Stealth 600 went on to be the best-selling Xbox One gaming headset for 2018. It also entered into a console-only sponsorship deal with Splyce.In 2018, the company launched a new line of PC-specific headsets called "Atlas." It received input and feedback from esports teams, OpTic Gaming and Astralis, during the design process. It also released the Elite Pro 2 headset designed for console gaming. In December 2018, it released a line of earbuds designed for mobile gaming.In 2019, Turtle Beach bought Hamburg-based company Roccat GmbH for 19.2 million US dollars. Roccat " belongs to the 10 best-selling gaming peripheral brands in Europe and, according to the latest Newzoo consumer surveys, is one of the four leading brands in terms of awareness, buying behavior and preference for gaming keyboards and mice in the German PC gaming market ". Today, Roccat represents Turtle Beach's PC branch.