10tacle Studios Acquires Stake In Climax

Officials from German producer 10tacle Studios have announced a “strategic partnership” with British developer Climax, which will see the German company acquiring a 29 percent stake in Climax Group ordinary shares. The new partnership will see the two companies jointly develop computer and video games in “specific genres”. 10tacle Studios, which also operates its own mobile phone division, is best known for producing PC titles such as Codename: Panzers and SimBin’s GTR series. The company has around 400 employees in Europe and Asia, with a turnover in 2006 of €29 million ($40.1m). Climax is best known for MotoGP on the Xbox and PC, as well as the ATV series of race games and TV tie-in Who Wants to Be a Millionaire for Buzz. The developer is also currently working on Silent Hill Origins for the PSP. Climax currently has around 150 employees in four separate studios. The two companies have announced they are working together on two new titles “of the action and fantasy genre”, with plans to extend that co-operation for the previously announced, but currently unnamed, online environment for MTV. “The agreed cooperation of our companies will form one of the biggest independent development-partnership worldwide for next-gen, PC, video and online entertainment. Climax Group has many years' development experience and proven technology that it has built up over many years of successful game development. Climax is a developer for several prominent games publishers,” said 10tacle Studios CEO Michele Pes. “The two companies complement each other perfectly on the development and production side. We are very glad that we have found such an experienced partner to strength our development capacities and we are currently seriously auditing further possibilities to integrate the Climax Group into our organization,” he added. Karl Jeffrey, CEO of Climax commented: “We believe that 10tacle Studios is the ideal strategic partner for Climax. Together, we are perfectly positioned to deliver international next-gen projects of the highest quality and to pioneer the development of advanced online gaming worlds and social networks.”