Category: Software

The deal will cover 1,140 English Premier League matches that will be played until the end of the 2009-10 Premier League season. The 2007 – 2008 Barclays Premier League season kicks off on 11 August and will showcase 380 matches until May 2008, informs an official release.

The rights awarded to Nimbus Sport include countries like China, Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Thailand, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and other countries in Asia; UAE, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Egypt, and other countries in the Middle East and North Africa; Italy, Portugal, Spain, Greece, and Belgium in Europe; and reaching as far as Brazil, Australia and New Zealand.

Nimbus Sport will market these rights in conjunction with PA SportEV – a subsidiary of PA Sport.

Nimbus Sport CEO Digvijay Singh said, “This is the first time that the Premier League has offered Internet rights separately from broadcast rights, and Nimbus Sport is delighted to be a pioneering commercial partner for the world‘s leading football property. With both the Internet rights and the Mobile rights to work on, we are excited at the prospect of bringing top football, on new media devices, to fans around the world.

“We have already closed major deals with licensees in Italy, Japan, China, Korea, Australia, Hong Kong and many other major markets – the intensity of the demand for Premier League match action on new media is very impressive indeed.”

Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore said, “New media markets are an increasingly important part of our international broadcast strategy and landscape. Nimbus demonstrated the requisite drive and market knowledge to secure the mobile and internet rights for some of the key areas of Premier League growth and I am sure they will offer quality production and delivery to prospective licensees and fans alike.”

Through this exclusive multi-year, worldwide license agreement, SOE will develop and publish an MMO based on Ramayan‘s story of mythological lore. Virgin Comics will serve as a creative consultant on the project. Virgin‘s creative involvement with SOE‘s game development team will be spearheaded by its president and head, Suresh Seetharaman, who has also overseen the development of the comic series. Also involved is filmmaker and Virgin Comics co-founder Shekhar Kapur, informs an official announcement made by the company.

The deal was announced by SOE president John Smedley and Virgin Comics co-founder and CEO Sharad Devarajan.

“Ramayan has inspired the lives of millions of people through the ages. The re-imagining of this great ancient epic through the creativity of a game platform re-affirms the fact that Ramayan is one of the greatest stories ever told,” said Chopra. “The fact that the same creative team of young Indians that created the story will be involved in working with SOE‘s game development team, is a testament to the innovative and mythic minds of these gifted Indian creators who will take a new generation to new frontiers across the seas of consciousness into new realms of mystery, magic, adventure, and transformation.”

“Virgin Comics approached us with a portfolio of amazing comic properties based on Indian lore. We particularly love Ramayan 3392 A.D., as we feel Virgin Comics‘ telling of The R?m?yana is particularly gripping, graphically brilliant and lends itself extremely well to an MMO,” said Smedley. “This a fantastic time for us to expand our games to include this culturally rich storyline and we are honored to do this with a diversified, creative and experienced company like Virgin Comics.”

Devarajan concluded, “In a world increasingly dominated with games influenced by a western Tolkien mythos, Ramayan will offer gamers a chance to experience a whole new universe of characters and archetypes derived from one of the oldest cultures on Earth. Our mission at Virgin Comics has always been to allow this generation of Indian youth to have a creative platform through which to speak to the world. Through this collaboration with the likeminded visionaries at SOE, our young Indian creators will make gaming history worldwide.”

As the Indian team, which is currently touring England, heads into a packed season with matches scheduled against Australia, Pakistan and Sri Lanka apart from the Twenty20 World Cup, Citibank Captain of Captains provides an opportunity to cricket fans across the world, to become the Captain and select his/her own team in the virtual domain.

A range of prizes including a trip to Australia to watch a Test match, Plasma TV, Laptop, Mobile Phones, iPods and much more will be awarded to the winners, as well as some special prizes for the Twenty20 World Cup. This activity will run till 17 October.

Citibank Country marketing manager Vijay Ramchandran says, “This game will provide an exciting opportunity to our customers, many of whom are avid cricket buffs, to test their cricketing acumen by selecting a team of their choice and contesting against other participants. Choosing the right team makes all the difference, in cricket, as in financial services.”

Speaking about this game, Krish Srikkanth, former Indian cricket captain and promoter of Krishcricket said,” I have used my personal experience and involvement with Cricket for over the last 25 years to design Citibank Captain of Captains and it is but natural for us to partner with Citibank, the ‘Captain of Captains’ in the financial services industry, to bring this game to cricket lovers.

“The game provides an opportunity for participants to don the hat of a selector and pick his/her own team and tests the skills of the participant in understanding the dynamics of team composition.”

The performance of each team is judged on the basis of number of ‘runs’ scored which directly depends on how the players of the virtual team have performed on the real playing field.

MUMBAI: Zapak Digital Entertainment Limited has announced the launch of the game ‘Cash Back‘ based on the movie Cash, which is scheduled for release on 3 August.

“We believe the graphics technologies developed in our research labs to be among the best in the world, and are pleased that we can collaborate with entertainment
industry leaders, through our new graphics technology IP licensing program, to bring new visual experiences to consumers,” said Microsoft GM intellectual property licensing group Louis Carbonneau .

Weta Digital offers visual effects for international feature films and commercials. The company is best known for its visual effects work on The Lord of the Rings trilogy and more recently for its work on King Kong, all of which were directed by Peter Jackson.

“We realized that by working directly with Microsoft Research, we could develop these ideas faster and spend more time on the creative effects. It‘s great to be working with a talented group, like Microsoft Research, whose aim is to open up new horizons in digital imaging for filmmakers,” said Weta Digital senior visual effects supervisor Joe Letteri.

Numbers introduces the concept of intelligent tables on a flexible canvas, a new approach that makes it easy to organize information, create calculations, analyze results and make spreadsheets look simple.

Pages ‘08 now features distinct modes for streamlined word processing and flexible page layout, a new contextual format bar and change tracking, and Keynote ‘08 now includes text effects, transitions and themes that help users easily compose presentations and smart builds with easy to set up A-to-B animations.

“Pages and Keynote make it incredibly easy, and even fun, for anyone to create stylish documents and presentations very quickly.Numbers rounds out the iWork suite, which is far more intuitive and easy to use than anything else out there,” said Apple CEO Steve Jobs.

iWork ‘08 can import Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel and
AppleWorks word processing, presentation and spreadsheet files, and can export documents in Microsoft Office file formats or PDFs for easy sharing.

iWork ‘08 is available through the Apple Store, Apple‘s retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers for a suggested retail price of $79 (US). A 30-day iWork ‘08 trial will be available on new hardware and with copies of iLife ‘08 sold at retail. After 30 days, the trial becomes an iWork ‘08 player, states an official release.

iWork ‘08 requires Mac OS X version 10.4.10 or later, a Macintosh computer with a 500 MHz or faster PowerPC G4, PowerPC G5 or Intel processor, 512MB of RAM (1GB recommended), 32MB of video RAM, QuickTime 7.2 or later and 1GB of available disk space.

PlayReady is a new content access technology from Microsoft that makes it easy for content owners and service providers to deliver virtually any type of digital content in a flexible manner.

As part of the agreement, Nokia and Microsoft will also collaborate on expanding and simplifying consumer scenarios for accessing, experiencing and moving digital content using mobile devices.

By supporting PlayReady, Nokia will make it easier for content owners and service providers to offer premium digital content for a radically increased installed base and enable more flexible business models, such as renting content or accessing it offline. For consumers, PlayReady brings flexible ways to manage their digital content between online, home and mobile devices. For example, a consumer could purchase content directly from their Nokia device and then transfer the content to enjoy on other designated devices, such as PCs or mobile devices.

“By adding support for Microsoft PlayReady technology, we are enabling service providers to offer a wide range of content and create truly compelling experiences across mobile devices, personal computers and online services. We plan to support PlayReady across a range of S60 and Series 40 devices starting in 2008,” said, Nokia SVP multimedia experiences Ilkka Raiskinen.

“Through our collaboration with Nokia, we aim to deliver a compelling platform that offers consumers seamless access to virtually any type of digital content they want,” said Microsoft corporate VP consumer media technology group Amir Majidimehr.

“Nokia‘s breadth of offering in this space, coupled with core digital media technology from Microsoft in the form of PlayReady, will bring new mobile entertainment scenarios to life for millions of consumers around the world,” added Majidimehr.

In addition, Microsoft has designed PlayReady to be fully backward-compatible with Windows Media DRM 10, which means that devices supporting PlayReady can access existing Windows Media DRM-based content as well as new PlayReady content services.

Legends of Norrath is an online card game playable within the EverQuest(EQ) and EverQuest II(EQII) live MMO games. Launching from an in-game menu, or using a free SOE Station ID, players can challenge opponents on their game server, or across other EQ and EQII servers in both casual games and high-level tournaments.

“With Legends of Norrath, we‘re expanding and evolving the EverQuest and EverQuest II experience for both our loyal fans as well as strategy gamers,” said Smedley.

“The cards and interface have been designed by some
people in our Denver studio, and perfectly capture the sense and feel that have made EQ and EQII so popular,” added Smedley

Developed at SOE‘s Denver, CO studio, Oathbound is the first release in the Legends of Norrath storyline. Oathbound features more than 375 digital cards and will be available in both 55-card digital starter decks and 15-card digital booster packs, states an official release.

In this first of three card sets, players become part of a clandestine, secret war between the forces of Order and Chaos. Once jailed on the Plane of Justice, a mysterious tribunal offers them a chance for freedom and redemption by helping fight against the forces of Chaos. In swearing allegiance to the side of Order, players become Oathbound, and fight this shadow war against the forces of Chaos to
keep them from plunging Norrath into a bloody and eternal war.

In addition to player vs. player combat, Legends of Norrath is the complete online card gaming experience, featuring a sophisticated, re-playable AI system for single player campaigns, easy to use management tools and numerous Casual and Tournament game lobbies. Victory can be achieved by completing quests or reducing your opponent‘s health, enabling players to employ their own unique strategies for victory. The game also features a robust loot system; more than 30 loot items each for EQ and EQII will be available, including player mounts, potions, clothing and spells.

Under the agreement, Apple and Microsoft will extend the seamless Web and software experience Apple users have enjoyed for years when using and viewing popular Microsoft fonts such as Times New Roman, Arial and Verdana(R).

Apple customers, developers and Web designers can specify fonts knowing that their documents, presentations and Web pages will appear as they are meant to be seen on
screen and in print.