O~3 Entertainment announces developer list
by Kit

Wednesday, June 2 2004

Company releases info on signed developers.

O~3 Entertainment announced today that they have signed the following independent game developers: The Behemoth, Espaço Informática, SyberSoft, Virtual Toys and XPEC Entertainment to publish games on multiple platforms.

“Our experience enabled us to hit the ground running, so it’s no surprise that we’re fairly far along in the process of bringing several titles to market already,” said Bill Gardner, O~3’s CEO. “Whether the selected game project is from a well-established company like Virtual Toys or a lesser known brand such as SyberSoft, the common factor is that these development teams are all working hard to put together really creative, fun, first-rate titles. Now O~3 is going to get them out there, so people can play and enjoy!”

The Behemoth (www.thebehemoth.com) is a San Diego, California development house created by experienced developers who previously worked at Gratuitous Games and Presto Studios. The company, which was formed one year ago, is focused on creating fun, hand drawn console games. One of the Behemoth’s founders, Tom Fulp, also owns and runs the popular entertainment portal www.newgrounds.com.”

Espaço Informática based in Brazil, (www.hades2.com) has three titles under its belt: Hades2, Christmas Magic and Matchball Tennis. Founded in 1990, the company’s most recent project, Hades2, is a 3D action game that was distributed in markets including Kuwait and the Middle East. In earlier title Christmas Magic players race the clock and strategize to help Santa deliver gifts around the globe. Espaço’s Matchball game was published last year in Brazil, Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

SyberSoft located on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, is a relatively young development studio under the direction of game industry veteran Ron Siller. In his more than 20 years in the electronic entertainment industry, Siller has, among many other things, established several game development facilities, created more than 100 original game characters and acted as a consultant to companies including AMD, Bandai America, Sega and 3Dfx Interactive. The engineers at Sybersoft have developed a proprietary 3D game engine called SyberEngine.

Virtual Toys is a nine-year-old development studio based in Madrid, Spain. The company’s team of passionate developers hails from Rebel Act, Pyro Studios, Dynamic and Ubisoft, among other developers and publishers. Early on, Virtual Toys developed an operating system and library for video coin-op machines that was sold to Recreativos Franco, one of the world’s biggest slot machine companies. Recent game releases include Clever & Smart (based on the popular European comic), The Morning Adventure, Pocket Tennis and the critically acclaimed Torrente (based on the Spanish film license) for platforms from Game Boy Advance to cell phones. Virtual Toys has a partnership with seasoned developer/publisher Cinemaware, Inc. for the creation of several new properties.

Taiwan-based XPEC Entertainment (www.xpecentertainment.com) has developed award-winning games for console, PC, online and mobile, including EX-Chaser and Daemon Vector. Daemon Vector was recently shown at the launch of Xbox Live as the first Xbox Live title developed in Asia and released worldwide. EX-Chaser was ranked number six on the Xbox top sales chart for 2003 in Japan. Currently XPEC is the only videogame company in Asia (excluding Japan) that has videogames published on the international market. In addition to its main studio in Taipei, XPEC has offices in Beijing, Tokyo and San Jose’s Silicon Valley.

Details about the first game titles to be published by O~3 are expected to be released soon.

--- Kit