Very informative email:
Henk Rogers, who swung that deal with the Soviet government and outfoxed Robert Maxwell in the first place now manages the TTC – past performance in this case applies to the side of the negotiating table opposite Nintendo. As murky and arcane as the politics of Tetris have been, I don’t know that an analysis as simple as “Nintendo doesn’t want to pay enough to hold the license” is entirely accurate.
After looking into it some more, my pet theory is that TTC has wanted to bring the product more in-house for a while – DS & Wii versions of Tetris have now been announced for Spring 2010 by Tetris Online, Inc. partnering with Majesco. One plausible narrative is that they gave Nintendo two years of the portable license in exchange for the free and clear to handle publishing it themselves on Nintendo’s systems going forward. This would take care of the problem of THQ’s failure to produce a DS Tetris with the minimum amount of fallout – THQ was upset anyway, but they’d have been absolutely furious had TTC removed the license directly to their subsidiary rather than having it go to Nintendo.
The funny part of the story is that Tetris Online is Henk Rogers, Alexey Pajitnov, and Minoru Arakawa. Like a bad penny.