"1C has secured the position of the biggest publisher and distributor in Eastern and Central Europe. Our goal is to keep this leading role in the region and to expand our business into the Far East and Western worlds," said Nikolay Baryshnikov, International Sales Director, 1C Company. "We have already opened several new offices including 1C UK and 1C Asia-Pacific and look forward to strengthening our position in the US. Together with our distribution partner Atari we would like to introduce our games to the American audience and offer an innovative approach to all the existing genres."

"Atari is thrilled to partner with 1C and offer our retail partners a wider-array of products to appeal to the broad and fast-growing demographic of gamers in North America," said Robert Stevenson, VP Business Development and Third Party at Atari.

1C's strength lies in both its size and its proven development teams. In fact it ships 11,5 tons of goods every day and sold over 17,8 million units in 2006. 1C is best known for some of its games already released under other publishers in the US. Among those are such critically acclaimed titles as IL-2 Sturmovik flight sim series, Soldiers: Heroes of World War II and Space Rangers 2: Rise of the Dominators. With so many developers working for 1C it properties will continue to be unique in 2007 as games like Fantasy Wars and Death to Spies are released. They will also bring back classic titles like King's Bounty and DeathTrack but with 1C's own distinctive flavor.

"Already open for 9 months, the UK office has greatly helped in communication with all our partners. Our goal is to increase our staff size here over the next few years to add even more support for publishers and developers, and with a view to self publish some of our titles in the future," said Peter King, Managing Director 1C UK. "We have helped several companies get into and understand the Russian market and this could have only been done by having a local office here in the UK. We are now pushing hard to work with partners to find good homes for some of our upcoming titles."

1C's hot new lineup spans multiple genres including first-person shooters, action titles, real-time strategy, simulation and role-playing games.