Westwood Studios was created in October 1985, two years after the video game crash of 1983 .When two friends Louis Castle and Brett Sperry started off in a garage in Las Vegas. This small buiseness grew into what became known as Westwood Associates.
In the early days Westwood was a fast growing company, mostly due to the resurgens in popularity of video games during this era, in part due to the release of the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). Many game consoles were released during this era, some originally intended to be released before the video game crash of 1983 but were cancelled due to the low popularity of video games at the time. Such as the Atari 7800 and others.
Westwood's early days was dedicated to porting varius video games from a platform to another. Such as Commodore 64 to the Atari ST. In 1988 Westwood released their first original game called "Mars Saga" for Commodore 64/128, Apple 2 and DOS. This game had a design flaws becasuse the designers were rushed to to reach the completion date. Because of this the game was renamed Mines of Titan, fixed and rereleased. They also released a game that would be the start of a genre known as "Real Time Strategy" the Real Time Tactics game "BattleTech: The Crescent Hawk's Revenge".
In 1990 Westwood released their first succsessful game "Eye of the Beholder" which is a RPG game based on the Dungeons & Dragons license. During this time Westwood also made games for Infocom and Disney, games such as "The Lion King" for the SEGA Genesis and Super Nintendo.
In 1992, Westwood Associates was renamed to the all familiar name "Westwood Studios" and was sold to Virgin Interactive to take part in Virgins publishing network. The same year, a game widely known as the first modern Real Time Strategy game was released, "Dune 2 The Building of a Dynasty". It was named "Dune 2" not because it's a sequel, but because of a trademark issue with a game released shortly before Dune 2, a RPG game known only as "Dune".
In the period from 1992 to 1995 Westwood Studios created a new franchise known as Lands of Lore, and some new Eye of the Beholder games, but on August the 31st 1995 Westwood released their first great commercial succsess "Command & Conquer". C&C was a huge hit, it became one of the most sold games at the time, that is untill Westwood released Red Alert. In the years that followed Westwood released many games, most notably Dune 2000, Blade Runner and C&C Sole Survivor.
In 1998 Electronic Arts aquired Virgin Interactives US assets and along with them they aquired Westwood Studios. In 1999 after many issues during developement they released finaly released Tiberian Sun, which originaly was set for release in 1998. A few months after Tiberian Suns release, Westwood was splitt into Westwood Las Vegas and Westwood Pacific. In January 2000, the RPG game Nox was released, and in October 2000 Red Alert 2 created by Westwood Pacific was released. 2001 saw the release of the Westwood Las Vegas created Emperor Battle For Dune and the Westwood Pacific developed C&C: Renegade and Red Alert 2 Yuri's Revenge.
Around late 2001 to middle 2002 C&C3 is romured, only to be revealed to be C&C Generals which was in developement at Westwood Pacific, however in a fatefull day in 2003, Electronic Arts dissolves Westwood Studios, the Westwood Las Vegas assets are moved to Los Angeles and Westwood Pacific becomes EA Pacific which finishes Generals and creates the Lord of the Rings the Battle For Middle Earth, and later EA Pacific is merged with EALA which creates Lord of the Rings the Battle For Middle Earth 2 and in 2007 after a long hitaus C&C returns again with C&C3: Tiberium Wars.
During the time Westwood Studios was being dissolved, a number of former Westwood employees including Joe Bostic, Mike Legg and Steve Tall creates Petroglyph Games, which many fans see as the recreation of Westwood Studios, but EA's C&C games become quite succsesfull, despite the strong criticism by long time fans of the C&C series.