Club iT and Codemasters partner to bring critically acclaimed racing games to G-cluster Gaming on Demand platform

Author: Codemasters

Club iT Corporation and Codemasters Software Company Ltd today announce their partnership to bring some of Codemasters' best known and commercially successful game franchises to the G-cluster Gaming on Demand platform.

The partnership will initially see the million-selling Codemasters titles TOCA Race Driver 2 and Colin McRae Rally 2005 made available to users worldwide using Club iT's innovative G-cluster technology.

The games, already published on PC, PlayStation 2 and Xbox, will now be available on any broadband-connected device, including existing digital cable and IPTV set-top boxes, entry level PCs, and 3G mobile phones.

Club iT provides gaming on demand services in three business models: a) providing an online gaming platform for ISP web portals and open web portals; b) offering server system licenses for Japanese and overseas service operators; and c) granting licenses to Japanese and overseas hardware vendors to bundle with TVs, STBs, PCs and game consoles.

The alliance with Codemasters is expected to accelerate the development of these business models by strengthening Club iT's content aggregation ability and game title portfolio.

Taro Hashimoto, CEO of Club iT, said, "We are pleased to announce this alliance with Codemasters, as part of Club iT's continuing efforts to bring the best content to the G-cluster gaming platform. We are big fans of both the TOCA and Colin McRae series, and look forward to a fruitful relationship with Codemasters."

Matt Davies, Business Development Manager of Codemasters: "We see the G-cluster platform as an opportunity to bring these prestige game brands to a wider audience, at a time when broadband networks are becoming increasingly important channels for the distribution of gaming content. For Codemasters, a particularly attractive feature of the G-cluster technology has been the fact that no downloads are required, rendering software piracy an impossibility."

ENDS

Club iT Corporation

Club iT is a subsidiary of SOFTBANK Broadmedia Corporation ("SBBM", www.broadmedia.co.jp). The G-cluster business is operated worldwide through Club iT Corporation (Osaka New Market: 4347). For more information, go to

http://www.clubit.co.jp/eng/eng_index.html

G-cluster Gaming on Demand

G-cluster Gaming on Demand brings high-end gaming to broadband networks. A dedicated grid of game servers enables the latest video games to be played on-demand with any broadband-connected device, including existing digital cable and IPTV set-top boxes, entry level PCs, and 3G mobile phones. The games are run on central game servers rather the devices themselves. The game servers transmit the audio-visual output stream of the game to the client devices which only need enough processing capacity to receive the stream and play back the video and audio of the game.

All existing and future game titles can be brought to the G-cluster platform with minimal porting work. The server-centric nature of the system is particularly well suited to multiplayer and other community-building games. For more information, please visit http://www.g-cluster.com