NetDevil Licenses Emergent's Gamebryo For LEGO Universe

Gazillion Entertainment-owned NetDevil will be using Emergent's Gamebryo on its current project: the LEGO Universe MMO. The all-ages online environment will be the first MMO based on the toy bricks. It's been long in the works; in 2008, the developer told us it had begun focus testing a full two years prior. But the project's technical director, Erik Urdang, says that using Gamebryo, the team's artists began creating content within the first month of production. "We evaluated other engines and chose Gamebryo for its render pipe and memory management features, in addition to the significant engineering support which allowed us to optimize the technology," he says. NetDevil, also developer of Jumpgate: Evolution has over 50 employees and is staffing up, describing more than one "large-scale" project in development. As for Emergent, the company recently said it's seen strong performance over the past two quarters, with continuing growth in all territories driven in part by its newer Gamebryo Lightspeed platform. In recent months, Emergent has also been visibly ramping up its base of licensees among Asian MMORPG developers; it's unveiled licensing agreements with Korea's Eya Soft, Shanghai-based Goldcool and Seoul-based JoyMaster Interactive, all of which are working on online role-playing games.