Malice: Kat’s Tale, a character driven, fast paced and challenging 3D action adventure game, made headlines at this year’s CES trade show when Bill Gates used it to demonstrate the capabilities of the Xbox™ video game system from Microsoft. Malice: Kat’s Tale delivers a new level of video gaming experience with substantially enhanced levels of gameplay, graphics and audio.

“This is a title we’ve had our eye on and have been excited about for a long time,” said J Allard, General Manager, Xbox Platform. “We are happy to be working with such experienced talent from Argonaut and Sierra and are looking forward to seeing this remarkable game come to life on Xbox.”

“This is a very strategic partnership for us as we extend our brand into the console market,” said Mike Ryder, president at Sierra. “I believe we’re poised to make a tremendous impact in the console market in the future, especially with the launch of Malice: Kat’s Tale in 2002.”

“Vivendi Universal Publishing’s marketing and distribution capabilities will allow us to substantially grow the Malice franchise,” said Joss Ellis, COO, Argonaut Software. “This agreement marks the start of a new and promising relationship with one of the key global players in the games marketplace.”

About Argonaut
Argonaut Games plc, based in London and Cambridge UK, is one of the largest independent games developers in the world, with over 150 employees, and an 18 year history of producing groundbreaking hit games such as Croc: The Legend of the Gobbos and hardware technologies,
like the Super FX chip. Argonaut prides itself on its creativity in games design and is at the vanguard of new technologies with development for current and future mass-market video game platforms such PlayStation®2, Game Cube™ and Xbox™.

About Vivendi Universal Publishing
Vivendi Universal Publishing, the publishing division of Vivendi Universal, the world's second-largest communications group, holds leading positions in all areas of content creation, from literature, reference, education, to games and consumer press (where it is a major player in France with the Express-Expansion and l'Etudiant groups). In the global publishing market, Vivendi Universal Publishing, the n°3 worldwide, is the only international publisher with a truly global reach. It is present in four key language areas (English, French, Spanish, Portuguese) and has strong local brands. With its 3 studios (Blizzard Entertainment, Sierra and Universal Interactive), it is one of the worldwide leaders in games on PC. Through a policy of digitizing content, geographical diversity of operations, and wide-ranging expertise in content creation, Vivendi Universal Publishing is pursuing a strategy of multi-platform distribution, expanding its markets and providing its local brands with a doorway to the global market.