Quarterly Round-Up - Summer 2006

This quarter saw the publication of Omar Sharif Bridge for on-line retail. Bridge is our flagship AI game of "imperfect information". Although this product competes well against other AI, this is a game where world-championship level human play is still unrivalled. We are working on that!!

As can be seen from our newsletter article topics, we are currently embroiled in representing and manipulating 3D worlds, which will manifest as a product after this quarter. This certainly has been interesting work and has required the solving of significant AI problems to achieve our goals. With even many of the most diminutive devices now sport 3D hardware, complex worlds can be represented on almost any device, so this is no longer the domain of just niche hardware.

A further shift in our work this quarter has been to focus on on-line and mobile gaming. With this in mind we attended the Mobile section of the Game Developer's Conference in Brighton, where we have entered discussions with NVidia with a view to porting games to use the GoForce 5500 chipset. NVidia have already provided the kit for this development, so expect to see our games on this chipset soon.

A follow-on event in this calendar was a trip to the Casual Games Conference in Austin, Texas this September. These events are a good chance to check how the market is going and how others are tackling the significant problems of game production and what is needed to successfully bring these to market. A valuable part of this conference for us was spent in discussion with Microsoft, who we are already contracted to provide AI engines for. An important focus of ours was also looking at South Korea and China, which are huge markets. However many western developers do not have easy access to these markets. We already have a mature relationship with the Japanese Developer/Publisher Unbalance, which gives us potential in all Asian markets.

A further significant and exciting development for us is a coming collaboration with Rubicon Mobile for an on-line product. The expectation is that this will be a long-term relationship, which should generate many on-line games. Rubicon Mobile have strong expertise in on-line gaming and a valuable 3D resource for creating such games. With our existing 3D knowledge and AI and their added experience, this offers good prospects of generating strong and interesting products.

Quarterly Round-Up - Spring 2006

Quarterly Round-Up - Winter 2005

Quarterly Round-Up - Autumn 2005

Quarterly Round-Up - Summer 2005

Quarterly Round-Up - Spring 2005