TransWorld Snowboarding loads Xboxä with x-treme winter action

An Ultimate Sports Game Created by a Finnish Fantasy Studio Housemarque TRANSWORLD SNOWBOARDING LOADS XBOX WITH X-TREME WINTER ACTION Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) / Los Angeles, CA and Helsinki, Finland - May 17, 2001 - Housemarque Inc., a Finnish gaming fantasy studio that was nominated as an official Xbox game developer in last autumn, has today gloriously returned to the spotlights of gaming community. Infogrames Inc., a leading global publisher of interactive entertainment software, has today announced first three sports games under the TransWorld license for the new Microsoft Xbox video game system. One of them is Housemarque's innovative creation: an action- packed winter sports game TransWorld Snowboarding. A vivid team of Finnish master game developers have created TransWorld Snowboarding with industry's top technological tools and methods. An arctic experience with treacherours terrain, life-like locations (The US, Finland, Italy, Germany, Japan and more) and soft powder snow makes a player really to feel the tense and pleasure of a snowboarding pro's life. Exposing new tricks with rails and downed trees to jib and grind plus natural snow kickers, half-pipes and quarter-pipes is challenging yet a lot of fun. TransWorld Snowboarding offers 1 - 4 player simultaneous play and licensed music chosen specifically to fit the snowboarding lifestyle. TransWorld Snowboarding is the first Xbox-game developed in Finland. Infogrames will start to distribute and market it world-wide with a huge promotion campaign as soon as all three TransWorld games are ready to be shipped - estimated in Q4 2001. "We are confident and excited to see the first sales figures, based on estimation Infogrames has provided us. Snowboarding is gaining success throughout the world and a lot of gamers like the life-style these games represent. TransWorld Snowboarding is at the same time an entertaining and a very challenging simulation-like game, still without any compromises usually seen in such hybrid-styled games", says Ilari Kuittinen, CEO of Housemarque, Inc. Housemarque was announced as an official Xbox game developer by Microsoft in a Xbox event in San Francisco on September 20th, 2000. During that year and after since Housemarque has done a lot of ground- breaking technological research and developing work on game development tools. The company has also conducted a successful professional-oriented programming course for the new generation of Finnish game developers. The first snowboarding game created by Housemarque - "Supreme Snowboarding" ("Boarder Zone" in US) - was published in 1999. It is still the most sold Finnish gaming software in the world. The game has been purchased by over 100 000 snowboarding lovers. Members of Housemarque staff can be reached in E3 Fair on random hours at Infogrames' booth #824. Visit also web site: www.housemarque.com for additional information. About Housemarque Founded in 1995, Housemarque Inc. is the largest independent Finnish gaming fantasy studio. The privat-held company is concentrating on demanding 3D-technology and extreme sports games genre. Latest programming technology and graphical skills are combined to create state- of-the-art interactive game products to be distributed in selected platforms - both PC and next generation consoles such as Microsoft Xbox. The graphics and gameplay of Housemarque products have received acknowledgement in the international games press frequently. Published game titles created by Housemarque include such names as Supreme Snowboarding / Boarder Zone (in US), The Reap, Alien Incident, Super Stardust, Elfmania and Stardust. The company has at the moment about 20 regular employees. About Infogrames Founded in 1983, France-based Infogrames Entertainment SA and its US majority-owned subsidiary Infogrames Inc. are together a leading publisher and distributor of video games for consoles (Sony, Sega, Nintendo and Microsoft), personal computers and Macintosh systems as well as interactive digital television, mobile smart devices (WAP, HDML) and in-flight entertainment systems. The company's award-winning franchises include Alone In The Dark, Driver, Deer Hunter, Jeopardy, Monopoly, Test Drive and Unreal. About Xbox Xbox (http://www.xbox.com) is Microsoft's future-generation video game system that delivers new and unforeseen gameplay experiences. With more than three times the graphic performance of the newest generation of game systems, Xbox unleashes game designers' creativity to produce games that are challenging, exhilarating and fun. ------------------------------------------------------------ This information was brought to you by BIT http://www.bit.se The following files are available for download: http://www.bit.se/bitonline/2001/05/17/20010517BIT00880/bit0001.doc http://www.bit.se/bitonline/2001/05/17/20010517BIT00880/bit0001.fcm