Village Gamer

Lévis – Creaform, developer and manufacturer of the Handyscan 3D line-up of handheld and self-positioning laser scanners, and specialized in 3D technologies, announces an important investment from two major Canadian investment companies: Novacap and Capital régional et coopératif Desjardins (CRCD). Creaform had very positive sales results in Q1, enjoying a 35% increase in year over year revenue.

“Creaform now has two first-rate financial partners, said Charles Mony, president of Creaform. Their expertise in finance and economy will be very precious to us, in particular in the realization of future expansion and acquisition projects. Plus, Novacap’s and CRCD’s financial support will help us speed up our growth and strengthen both our well-established line-ups of products, Handyscan 3D and HandyPROBE, while carrying on with our R&D efforts.”

“Creaform is certainly a jewel amongst the Canadian high technology companies, and will rapidly become a world leader in its industry. Creaform is a great addition to Novacap’s technology portfolio, and we are thrilled to work with them going forward and to contribute to their success”, said Pascal Tremblay, general partner at Novacap.

“We are proud to join Novacap in supporting Creaform’s growth. Thanks to the quality and diversification of its clientele and the experience of its team of employees, Creaform is well-positioned on the growing market of 3D scanning”, said Luc Ménard, vice-president of Desjardins Venture Capital.

Vancouver – As Simon Fraser University’s School for the Contemporary Arts prepares to relocate to its new home at 149 West Hastings in downtown Vancouver, three arts-savvy staffers have recently joined the project’s team.

Now helping to guide the artistic vision for SFU at Woodward’s are:

* Sabine Bitter: Curator, Audain Gallery

In addition to her teaching duties in SFU Visual Arts, internationally recognized multi-media artist Bitter will curate the Audain Visual Arts Teaching Gallery, opening in Feburary 2010. The new gallery will exhibit contemporary visual arts, and initiate a range of projects in connection with the Audain Visiting Artists program.

* Michael Boucher: Director, Cultural Development & Programming

Boucher is a seasoned director and programmer who has produced several international festivals including the World Stage Festival and International Children’s Festival in Toronto. A native Montrealer, he will serve as the university’s impresario, coordinating cultural events to ensure SFU at Woodward’s is a dynamic player in Vancouver’s arts scene. His first challenge: to oversee the production of the inaugural program, kicking off with Robert Lepage’s The Blue Dragon/Le Dragon Bleu in February, 2010 in the Fei and Milton Wong Experimental Theatre.

* Vanessa Richards: Director, Community Engagement

A native Vancouverite who came up through Vancouver’s independent arts and music scene in the 1980s, Richards will help SFU at Woodward’s to fully integrate with the surrounding community through non-academic arts initiatives. An internationally published poet, jazz musician and cultural facilitator, she has earned a reputation both at home and abroad for bold arts initiatives and intercultural collaboration. Richards’ position is funded by a grant from the Vancouver Foundation.

Montreal – Meridian4 has signed a multi-title digital publishing agreement with RTL Interactive Games Publishing, a subsidiary of RTL Television in Germany and part of Europe’s leading entertainment network RTL Group, to release four titles into North America.

The titles covered in this agreement include: the crime-solving action arcade racing game sequel; Crash Time 2, the very unique racing team management game, aptly named Racing Team Manager, the third sequel in the very successful sports series; Biathlon 2009 and to make you forget about the scorching hot Summer heat, the market leader in winter sports compilations; Winter Sports 2009 – The Next Challenge.

Birgit Hönsch, Head of Games Publishing & Licensing at RTL interactive comments: “We are happy to enlarge our games’ presence in the North American market due to this agreement with Meridian4 and are confident in establishing a long lasting partnership.”
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Toronto – Streamlogics today announced that effective July 1, 2009, the Streamlogics business has been acquired by Thomson Reuters. Streamlogics is a leading provider of webcasting applications and services in North America, with a strong presence in the financial, healthcare and technology sectors. The terms of the deal of privately-held Streamlogics remain undisclosed.

Thomson Reuters is a $13 billion company headquartered in New York City with operations in 93 countries. In addition to being the world’s leading source of intelligent information for businesses and professionals, Thomson Reuters is the largest webcast provider in the world. With webcast broadcast centers across four continents, Thomson Reuters is committed to providing corporations worldwide with innovative solutions that effectively meet all of their business communication needs.

Streamlogics is a leading global provider of results-driven webcasting solutions for hundreds of enterprises across several verticals including financial services, technology and healthcare/life sciences. Streamlogics’ webcasting solutions are utilized for training and certification, marketing and lead generation, and corporate communications. Founded in 1999, Streamlogics is based in Toronto, with regional sales offices in Canada and the United States. The company also supports a global network of value added resellers.
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Toronto – In a just-concluded press conference held at the Isabel Bader Theatre, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty, with an introduction by the Honourable Sandra Pupatello, Minister of Economic Development and Trade, announced a 263 million dollar commitment and a 10 year partnership with Ubisoft to open a new development studio which will employ a staff of 800 people. Ubisoft’s net investment in the new studio will be over half a billion dollars in the new studio, which will begin operations in late 2009.

“Today’s announcement marks a strategic move for Ubisoft as we continue to expand our internal

Premier McGuinty

development force,” said Yves Guillemot, president and chief executive officer at Ubisoft. “We are in an excellent position to grow and after extensive analysis we are thrilled to have reached an agreement with the government of Ontario to found our new studio in Toronto. The city is one of North America’s economic and cultural epicenters and our expectations are high. We’re excited to be able to count on the exceptional local talent, who will contribute to our accelerated growth and will have a profound impact on the video game industry with the excellence of their creativity.”

Three years in the making, Premier Dalton said that some of the primary reasons Ubisoft chose Toronto for their newest studio was the amazing talent, innovation, and ties to the movie industry enjoyed by Toronto’s creative industry. Collaborating with local film industry veterans to enhance video game production and extend Ubisoft’s convergence strategy, Ubisoft Toronto will contribute to Ubisoft’s global plan of extending its brands to complementary platforms and mediums, including books, comics, short films and other products.
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Vancouver – Aftercad Software is pleased to announce the Beta signup for its ground breaking 3D Workspace for collaboration in Digital Prototyping and Building Information Modeling (BIM) projects.

The Aftercad 3D Workspace is a Software as a Service (SaaS) offering that allows businesses to upload, view, mark-up, manage and publish large and complex 3D CAD files onto the web, without the need for proprietary viewers, providing easy and instant access to 3D project information by non-CAD professionals.

“With the development of the 3D Workspace Beta we have achieved our goal of bringing a complete online file system to our customers so that they can collaborate on all project documents including stunning 3D visuals,” said Chris Boothroyd, CEO of Aftercad. “The goal of the 3D Workspace is to quickly centralize, visualize and annotate what it is you are trying to build so that your clients can come to decisions faster and easier. Each 3D Workspace has its own secure online file system, event notification and sharing tools so that you can easily invite clients or partners to collaborate with you on a 3D project.”
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Montreal – Meridian4 celebrates its 5 year anniversary by offering gamers a gift of great savings on all of our titles. Celebrating their 5th year in business, Meridian4 has arranged specials with their digital distribution partners on all of their products in the coming months.

Joel Kinnunen, Business Development Director at Frozenbyte wished Meridian4 a happy birthday, saying that “We are thrilled to see Meridian4 thrive in this business, they truly deserve it. We signed our first game Shadowgrounds to Meridian4 back when they were just starting out and we haven’t regretted it. It’s rare to find a publisher whose goals seem to match those of the developer. Meridian4 is one of those publishers and the whole gang has been a pleasure to work with. If our companies’ paths cross again in the future I wouldn’t hesitate one bit to work with them again.”

The 5th Anniversary celebrations kick off on Steam with a 50% savings on all of Meridian4’s games and packs, including Shadowgrounds Survivor and Indie titles Obulis and Space Trader, as well as the Meridian4 Complete Pack with 14 games for only $24.99. The sale begins June 29th and continues until July 6th.

I see many valuable uses for this application and its updates – kudos to Techneos

Vancouver – A significant upgrade will soon be available for Techneos® Entryware™ mobile survey software, opening up new capabilities for mobile research. Featuring a new survey engine for Windows Mobile® devices, this July 8th release will also provide an enhanced user experience for conducting mobile surveys on Windows® 98/XP/Vista, Palm OS® and webOS™ devices.

The Entryware platform for mobile research handles long, complex questionnaires with ease, enabling sophisticated consumer feedback on mobile devices ranging from entry level PDAs to the latest Smartphones and Windows-based Netbooks. With support for over 200 languages, Entryware software is ideal for face-to-face interviews, mystery shopping and diary studies.

Building on the unique notification system and scripting language already used by some of the world’s leading research organizations, the new release of Entryware software provides new capabilities to support self-completed research such as consumer diaries. Photo support and “lockdown” mode, already available for Entryware customers on Palm OS devices, are now available on Windows Mobile as well, allowing researchers to turn a wide range of PDAs and Smartphones into personal survey appliances. Enhanced project automation is also provided to simplify the user experience for self-completed surveys.
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Ottawa – Zip.ca and California-based Sonic Solutions® today announced a partnership to provide Canadian consumers access to high-quality digital movie downloads. As part of the alliance, Zip.ca will introduce a digital movie service powered by Roxio CinemaNow®, offering movies and TV episodes that can be instantly downloaded and enjoyed on PCs. In addition, the service will be embedded in consumer electronics (CE), enabling consumers to stream premium video entertainment directly to a range of home and mobile devices.

The partnership and introduction of digital movie delivery enhances the Zip.ca subscription service, which currently offers Canadians access to over 72,000 DVD titles via mail. It will also mark an important expansion for Roxio CinemaNow, which will gain a strong foothold in the Canadian marketplace and the ability to offer CE device partners a more flexible, multi-region enabled solution.

“Our collaboration with Sonic will allow Zip.ca to provide subscribers a new, flexible way to digitally access high quality entertainment in addition to the full catalog we currently offer by mail,” said Curt Millar, CEO, Zip.ca. “We are already Canada’s leading DVD rental service; now we hope to fuel membership and growth by becoming consumers’ destination for seamless digital movie access – a one-stop Entertainment shop.”
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Montreal – Ubisoft has today announced that it will reinforce its partnership with Metaboli, the European leader in the digital distribution of PC games. Its titles will be available as download-to-own via GamesPlanet in EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) territories at the beginning of June, and via GameTap in the U.S. Ubisoft was one of the first independent developers to build commercial relationships with Metaboli in 2001 through its subscription-based services.

“We are very pleased to pursue our partnership with Metaboli. This fruitful collaboration will offer users the opportunity to purchase digitally a large range of our most successful games,” states Stéphanie Perotti, chief operating officer EMEA.

“There are 47 Ubisoft titles available in the catalogue and they have been particularly popular with our users. Several games including Assassin’s Creed®, Rayman Raving Rabbids®, Prince of Persia®, Far Cry®, Brothers in Arms®, Rainbow Six® and the Splinter Cell® series have performed consistently well across our subscription-based platform,” comments Pierre Forest, VP content at Metaboli. “These games will undoubtedly achieve the same success through our download-to-own model, especially since they will now be distributed in the U.S. market following our acquisition of GameTap.”
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