Duke Nukem is a media franchise named for its main character, Duke Nukem. Created by the company Apogee Software Ltd. (now 3D Realms) as a series of video games for personal computers, the series expanded to games released for various consoles by third-party developers. The first two games in the main series were 2D platformers, while the later games have been a mix of first-person and third-person shooters. In 2010, the rights of the series were acquired by Gearbox Software, who completed the development of Duke Nukem Forever and released it on 10 June 2011 in Europe and Australia and on 14 June 2011 in North America. The franchise generated over $1 billion in revenue by 2001.