Quarterly Round-Up - Winter 2005

Our busiest quarter yet has meant a late edition of the newsletter. We have been immersed in new technology, which, along with other new work, has kept us well-occupied.

A significant development has been in our new contract negotiations: AI Factory and Microsoft have been in discussion for some time and will shortly be signing a long-term contract to supply Microsoft with multiple AI game engines for up-and-coming projects. These potentially cover all platforms and you should see AI Factory game engines appearing in several guises under the Microsoft label. This is, of course, a significant contract for AI Factory, and should allow forging of closer links with Microsoft for other future projects.

Our publishing portfolio is still expanding. We currently have titles in retail under Mindscape, BHV, Denda, EmcX, Unbalance, Gizmondo, Global Star and now SelectSoft. The latter, starting 2006, provides our first published Chinese Chess product for the market. This program was twice a gold medal winner in the Computer Olympiad. Chinese Chess is however not our speciality: our flagship engine is Shogi (Japanese Chess), with one Gold and one Silver Computer Olympiad medal and twice placed 3rd in the world rankings. We will soon be off to Tokyo to compete again in the coming world championship.

Work continues on a new major project, started last year, but still under wraps. This has had us working on new technology released in 2006, based on a new OpenGL-ES mobile under Brew using RealView and GCC. These new platforms may be small enough to lose through a hole in your pocket, but their processing power is impressive. The ARM9-based device has 4 megabytes of RAM and a 3D graphics processor. Compare this to older technology. The 300mip ARM9 is some 100x faster than the original IBM-PC and with 64x the memory. Back in the early 80s an IBM-PC with 4x the standard memory was a real work-horse machine, but it could not hold a candle to this tiny new device.

Later on the event calendar, after the World Computer Shogi Championships in Japan in May, is the Casual Games Conference in Austin, Texas in September. We also have the inevitable E3 bookmarked and a few other new conferences starting in 2006. We will have to look hard at our schedules.

This Summer has other new projects in discussion, all NDA protected, but should feature in the coming newsletter.

Wishing a (late) good new 2006 to all our customers!

Quarterly Round-Up - Autumn 2005

Quarterly Round-Up - Summer 2005

Quarterly Round-Up - Spring 2005

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