Ubi Soft Entertainment - Press News

Ubi Soft Entertainment Signs Smart Dog Sports Series

London, England, October 29, 1997 -- The San Francisco-based U.S. headquarters of Ubi Soft Entertainment, today announces the signing of an exclusive agreement for the worldwide (excluding Japan) publishing rights of a range of arcade sports titles being developed by the up and coming UK-based development team, Smart Dog. The first of these titles will be Tennis Arena, a 3D tennis game available this Fall for the PlayStation, and early First Quarter 1998 for PC CD-ROM. As part of the deal, future game releases will also be on the Nintendo 64 platform. All titles will be released over the next 18 months.

Yves Guillemot, president of Ubi Soft commented, "I am delighted that we are working with a company who really understands what gamers want and who have the savoir-faire to get the best results from the new technologies available. The Smart Dog products are imaginative, visually stunning and have a great focus on gameplay."

Thierry Ortolan, Director of Smart Dog added, "We are very excited by the opportunity Ubi Soft is giving us to develop highly playable sports games on the Nintendo 64 and PlayStation systems. We will be able to build a strong product range which we know will be heavily promoted by Ubi Soft."

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Smart Dog was created in 1994 by Dave Thompson Producer of such classics as Micro Machines, Pete Sampras Tennis and Brian Lara's Cricket. The company has also developed a real time Z-Buffer for the PlayStation.

Ubi Soft Entertainment, founded in 1986 in France by the five Guillemot brothers, is a $60 million European-based software publishing and distribution company. Ubi Soft entered the software development arena in 1993 after its continued success in software distribution, representing 35% of all entertainment software to the French market. The company now distributes software in Europe for more than 50 companies, including LucasArts, Konami, Broderbund, 7th Level, Blue Byte, Blizzard, Bayard Presse and The Discovery Channel.

Ubi Soft has made its mark on the interactive entertainment software market and is best known in the U.S. for Rayman, a blockbuster action/adventure game for all ages that debuted in 1995. The company also has its own line of unique family-oriented entertainment and edutainment products, including the recent racing game called POD, a revolutionary hyper-sonic, sci-fi racing thriller.

With a presence in 37 countries, notably in the U.S.A., China and Japan, Ubi Soft has structured its activities simultaneously around three complementary disciplines: production, publishing and distribution. Ubi Soft reported sales of $60 million (345 million francs) for the period 1996/97, up 38% on the previous year. In addition to its U.S. offices in San Francisco, CA and its headquarters in France, Ubi Soft has offices in Japan, Germany, Spain, Italy, England, Australia and China.

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