NEWS - Wednesday, April 2, 2003
Digital Extreme Celebrates 10 Years
DIGITAL EXTREMES CELEBRATES TEN YEAR MILESTONE LONDON, Ontario – April 2, 2003 – This month marks the 10 year anniversary for Canadian-based leading independent game development studio, Digital Extremes. Since its founding by James Schmalz in 1993, Digital Extremes has grown from a one-man shareware shop to one of the most hotly sought after independent game development studios in the video game industry. “Reaching 10 years in this industry is an impressive milestone,” remarked Schmalz. “Our driving success is the incredibly talented and passionate team that has grown with us over the years. Finding and keeping talent in this industry is crucial and we’ve been lucky at doing both.” Starting during the shareware craze of the early ‘90s, Schmalz hit big with Epic Pinball, a modest but addictive creation with sales that trailed only behind such industry greats as Duke3D, Doom and Wolfenstein 3D. Still considering achievements in shareware to be the purest form of success, Schmalz attests, “It was do or die with shareware, the sales model forced you to make great games. And that model formed some of the best development teams in the industry. If you look at many of today’s really successful independent developers you’ll notice that they have one thing in common, they made big hit games in the shareware days.” Expanding on his shareware success, Schmalz founded Digital Extremes in April of 1993 and began creating something more graphically cutting-edge and technically complex, areas that Digital Extremes has since become known for in their games. Partnering with Epic Games on development, they together created what has become the award-winning multi-million unit selling franchise, Unreal® with their most recent successes being Unreal Championship Xbox™ and Unreal Tournament 2003 for PC. In 2001, Digital Extremes started a second studio in Toronto to focus specifically on games for the next generation console systems. The new studio, aptly named Digital Extremes Toronto is currently in production with its first title for Xbox. Details on the new game are expected to be released soon. In celebration of the 10 year milestone, Digital Extremes has redesigned its Web site at www.digitalextremes.com, adding more background on the company and its games as well as details on the new studio in Toronto. The new site will also serve as the main source of information on Digital Extremes’ upcoming titles currently in development. In addition, the two studios will be celebrating together at the London headquarters at a privately held 10 year anniversary party.Source: http://www.xboxaddict.com/
