HeroEngine Technology, Critical to Star Wars: The Old Republic’s Successful Launch Now Used by Thousands of Game Developers
January 16 2012 - 8:00AM
Business Wire
On December 20, 2011 the highly anticipated game from Electronic
Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: EA)/BioWare™, Star Wars™: The Old Republic™, was
released to the wider public. Importantly, this also marks the
first release of a major game built using the HeroEngine™, an
integrated development platform for building online games.
The HeroEngine originally was designed with huge multiplayer
scalable games such as the Star Wars MMO in mind. BioWare made its
decision to build this complex, large scale game on the HeroEngine
foundation because of its superior, integrated offering of
development tools that provide live collaborative development and
real-time updates, dramatically streamlining the process of
building online games.
When Idea Fabrik Plc. (Boerse Berlin symbol GB00B61CVK31, TI4.F)
acquired the technology from Simutronics in 2010, Alex Shalash,
Idea Fabrik’s Chairman and co-founder saw a great opportunity to
bring innovation in both technology and services to the broader
online game development space. Shalash said, “We saw HeroEngine as
a very powerful toolset where through some changes in technology
and additions of complementary services we could provide a new
business model for smaller game studios in both the MMO and Social
Game markets.”
In a matter of months, Idea Fabrik launched the “HeroCloud™”
service developed to provide continuously updated HeroEngine
technology in combination with a new service layer designed for the
needs of medium and smaller game studios. HeroCloud also supports
developers post-launch with hosting and bandwidth as well as global
billing and marketing solutions. HeroCloud is free to use for
developers, and applies a revenue sharing model upon game
launch.
There are already thousands of developers using HeroCloud and
according to President and COO Neil Harris, “Developers are seeing
a significantly reduced time to market. The Star Wars MMO was a
major, multi-year undertaking, but other MMO games have shipped on
our platform in as little as 15 months.”
The HeroCloud has been available to the wider public for only a
few weeks as a free download from the website. For more information
about HeroCloud, visit the official site at heroengine.com.
About Idea Fabrik:
Idea Fabrik is an industry leading online games company. The
company licenses its HeroEngine game development technology
platform to dozens of studios worldwide for online games which
include Electronic Arts / Bioware’s MMO title, Star Wars: The Old
Republic. Idea Fabrik also provides the HeroCloud managed service,
offering to thousands of independent developers low-cost access to
the HeroEngine technology. For more information about Idea Fabrik,
including details about the company’s online game development
studios across the globe, visit the official website at
ideafabrik.com.
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STAR WARS and related properties are trademarks in the United
States and/or in other countries of Lucasfilm Ltd. and/or its
affiliates.
BioWare™ is a Label of Electronic Arts Inc.