Tag: e3

Unity Technologies Celebrates Six Years of Indie Game Development Goodness

The leading Indie game engine celebrates its sixth birthday.

PRESS RELEASE

SAN FRANCISCO, CA–(Marketwire – June 06, 2011) – Unity Technologies, provider of the Unity development platform for awesome games and interactive 3D on the web, iOS, Android, consoles and beyond, today celebrated Unity’s sixth anniversary.

Unity, launched onstage at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) in 2005, is commemorating six years of steadfast leadership and relentless innovation in democratizing game development and making it possible for everyone to create rich interactive 3D content.

“We bet on broad democratization of game development and have been aggressively coding and innovating to realize that vision,” said David Helgason, CEO of Unity Technologies. “We just surpassed the 500,000 user milestone, our customers continue to amaze us with their creations, and we are expanding our team at a rapid rate. It’s exciting to be both an instigator and a participant in this revolution.”

A few of the things that have happened in the last 12 months:

Unity was named the #1 Game Engine by Game Developer Magazine readers, received Develop Magazine’s coveted Grand Prix Award and won the prestigious Wall Street Journal Technology Innovation Award Unity became the platform of choice for teaching students how to design and develop games

The company’s registered user base surpassed 500,000 users; 150,000 of these users are active monthly users representing well over a million hours of game development every month

The free Unity browser plugin for playing web games exceeded 60 million installs

Unity and the Unity Web Player were certified by the US Army and Air Force so they can be installed on their secure networks

The third generation of Unity, with dozens of major new features, 100+ additional enhancements and up to 10x performance improvements, and support for Android were released

The company teamed with Qualcomm to bring Augmented Reality (AR) to Android The number of Unity games in the Apple iOS App Store exceeded 1500 — “best of” and “top selling” games include Battleheart, Gears, Samurai II, Skee-Ball and Snuggle Truck

The company rocked Game Developers Conference (GDC) in a big way and won Best of Show The company announced a deep partnership Electronic Arts (EA)

The company launched the Unity Asset Store, a digital marketplace where developers can share and sell assets to accelerate development, and it’s quickly become the #1 marketplace for Unity developers

The company introduced Union, a business unit dedicated to distributing high quality 3D games on mobile phones, tablets, set-top boxes, connected TVs and other new platforms — Union announced a partnership with Sony Ericsson to enable rapid development and porting of Unity-based games to the new Sony Ericsson Xperia PLAY smartphone and a partnership with RIM to bring dozens of Unity-based games to the PlayBook

For the full list of awards and accolades, simply visit:
http://unity3d.com/company/fast-facts.

Moshi Monsters Hits 50 Million Registered Users Worldwide

Publisher claims Moshi Monsters is one of the fastest growing kids entertainment brands in the world with 50 million registered users worldwide.

PRESS RELEASE

New York – June 6, 2011 – Two years ago, London-based startup Mind Candy launched Moshi Monsters (www.moshimonsters.com), with the goal of giving 6-12 year old kids a fun, social and safe online experience. Today, Moshi Monsters is a new form of children’s entertainment. The website forms the heart of the experience, which combines adoptable pet monsters, safe social networking, games, stories, missions and educational puzzles.

The site has become hugely successful over the last year growing at the rate of one new sign up every second, with the fastest growth being seen across North America.
Following its online popularity the brand has made a successful transition into the offline world with the launch of best-selling toys, books, video games, trading cards and a Moshi magazine within the UK and Australia.

Spin Master is onboard as U.S. toy partner and Moshi Monsters toys will launch in North America this summer via an exclusive partnership with a major retail partner – to be announced imminently. Books from Scholastic and trading cards from Topps are on shelf in the U.S. currently and many other categories including the magazine and video games will roll out in the coming months.

Hot on the heels of its retail success, Mind Candy is also now working on music, live tours, a revolutionary TV platform and a Moshi film.
From near bankruptcy in late 2008, Mind Candy is on course to generate over $100 million in gross retail sales across all Moshi Monsters related product during 2011.
“North America is a huge growth area for us right now,” said Michael Acton Smith, CEO and creator of Moshi Monsters.
He continued, “We’re delighted to hit 50 million registered users and have even more ambitious plans ahead. Our vision is to build the largest entertainment brand in the world for this new digital generation of kids.”

For those who don’t know … what is Moshi Monsters?

Players choose from one of six virtual pet monsters – Furi, Poppet, Diavlo, Zommer, Luvli and Katsuma – that they can create, name and nurture. Once their pet has been customized, players can navigate their way around Monstro City, taking the daily puzzle challenge to earn ‘Rox’
(virtual currency), playing games, solving Super Moshi Missions, personalizing their room, showing off their artwork, reading stories and communicating with friends in a safe environment. Now kids can enjoy Moshi Monsters in a variety of forms whether it be online, via books, a magazine or playing with their favorite toy.

About Mind Candy

Online gaming and entertainment company, Mind Candy was founded by internet entrepreneur Michael Acton Smith (CEO) in 2004. The company created Moshi Monsters, which has 50m players around the world and is now expanding rapidly offline into books, toys, trading cards, TV and film.