Emergent Signs Pan-Company Licensing Deal With THQ

Publisher THQ (Company of Heroes, Saints Row 2) signed a master licensing agreement with Emergent Game Technologies enabling the former's internal and external developers to use Emergent's products, such as Gamebryo, for upcoming PS3, Xbox 360, Wii, and PC titles. Gamebryo is a cross-platform game development engine toolset designed for current and next-generation game development. The company's recently launched Lightspeed product is a real-time feedback and rapid prototyping/iteration/development module building on the Gamebryo engine. Emergent believes that providing THQ with these core technologies for creating titles for various genres and platforms will help the company lower costs associated with creating assets. THQ's in-house studios includes Relic Entertainment (Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II), Vigil Games (Darksiders: Wrath of War), Volition, Inc. (Red Faction: Guerrilla), and several others. “We were impressed by Emergent’s approach of providing a single development environment that we can use to create any title on our product schedule,” says THQ's senior vice president of production and worldwide studios Roy Tessler. He continues, “Their technologies will allow us to reduce the time we spend in redundant recreation of core technology. Through rapid prototyping and rapid iteration, we can build better games with less risk by redirecting development resources to allow our designers to concentrate on innovating original game play.”