AGDC: CCP, Codemasters, Icarus and Cheyenne Turn To IBM Servers

IBM has announced that MMO game companies CCP Games (Eve Online), Codemasters (Colin McRae Rally series), Icarus Studios (Fallen Earth) and Cheyenne Mountain Studios (Stargate Worlds) have chosen IBM's BladeCenter and System x servers for their online games. In particular, CCP Games has deployed a cluster of more than 420 CPU cores housed in IBM System x and BladeCenter servers, helping it to scale for rapid growth - since its 2003 launch, EVE Online's subscriber base increased to more than 200,000 players in only four years. IBM says CCP's supercomputing cluster manages more than 150 million daily database transactions. As for Codemasters, the England-based company deployed IBM BladeCenter systems as their hosting platform for The Lord of the Rings Online and RF Online. For example, RF Online connects gamers 6,000 miles apart across two continents through its hosting infrastructure remotely managed from Boston. Icarus Studios' licensee Fallen Earth, a post-apocalyptic future MMO currently in development, will also run on IBM BladeCenter, IBM System x and IBM System Storage. Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment, based in Mesa, Arizona, is building its first online RPG around the Stargate franchise, and deployed IBM's System x3800 servers to develop, test and support the effort. "We were pleased with the breadth of expertise and experience IBM brought to help us build our MMOG solution," said Joe Ybarra, senior vice president of Strategic Operations, Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment. "We selected IBM servers that offered the best combination of uptime, performance and expandability to meet the needs of Stargate Worlds."