The funding from the LOI will underwrite IENT's entire 30 month development schedule for Civilization's Dawn. The final funding arrangement, which will be through a European financial consortium, will be completed over the next two months.
IENT is reviewing numerous options for publishing Civilization's Dawn in the United States, Europe, and Asia. "Sid Meier and I experienced tremendous success when we first shipped Civilization at MicroProse," said JW "Wild Bill" Stealey, CEO of IENT. "The growing success of the Real Time Strategy game genre combined with our new massively multiplayer role playing features, could position Civilization's Dawn as one of the breakout games of 2006."
IENT expects to announce the publisher of Civilization's Dawn in September. "We want aggressive publishers who can assist IENT in reaching our retail sales goals in all parts of the world for Civilization's Dawn," added Stealey. "With our new funding in place the right publisher can have access to Civilization's Dawn retail successes without the traditional up front development expense."
The Publisher will need to guarantee an agreed level of retail success at one year from Civilization's Dawn's ship date. "The Publisher will have added a great new game to their product lineup with little or no risk except distribution risk," adds Mr. Stealey. "We think this type of funding, similar to how movies are currently funded, will enable Publishers access to bigger and better games like Civilization's Dawn."
Civilization's Dawn will require a staff of over 35 developers, an extensive Internet network to support online communities of hundreds of thousands of online players, and significant marketing to make the product one of the best games of the year. This funding allows IENT to produce the game with the highest game, graphic, and feature list imaginable in a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. (MMORPG).
The title will be launched in retail stores around the world as well as online through the iEntertainment Network portal (www.IENT.com) and its partners in Europe and Asia. IENT currently operates two successful MMORPG's in North America, Helbreath and Savage Eden, through partnerships in Korea. IENT's Internet environment can manage over 200,000 individuals playing online simultaneously.
"Civilization's Dawn will be the ultimate in Nation Building games," said Stealey. "Players can make their own communities, towns, cities, or nations. The players can cooperate with other peoples, compete with other nations, or war with other countries. The game environment will let the player leaders make the world operate in the way they would like to see the World work. Civilization's Dawn will pay tribute to successful role-playing titles such as Everquest, Dark Age of Camelot, and Ultima-Online. The Nation Building features of the game will include many of the great building features found in great real time strategy titles such as Civilization, Warcraft and Command and Conquer."
Using IENT's Patent on Internet Gaming, Civilization's Dawn is being developed with a propriety Internet smoothing technology. Because of this Patented technology, thousands of individuals from around the world will be able to play simultaneously and seamlessly in the same gameplay environment.