LARA CROFT GOES
MOBILE
Copyright 2001 www.tornado-insider.com
[ September 12th 2001 ]
Lara
Croft, the popular heroine of the Tomb Raider
games, will soon be apperaing even on mobile phones.
Tao Group has made computer and console video
games compatible with mobile phones. The British
software house has created an innovative technology
which has convinced a consortium of investors
headed by US Bowman Capital Partners to offer
new financing worth $18 million.
Tao Group
had already received a first recognition for its
technology last July. On that occasion the Open
Contents Platform Association, (OCPA), was created
in Tokyo. OCPA is a consortium made up of approximately
twenty world producers in the electronics consumption
field among which Sharp, JVC, Kyocera which had
chosen Intent, the Java-based multimedia platform
created by the British company, in order to create
a standard for the association.
OCPA
was conceived for OEMs and for content suppliers
and it was born with the objective of creating
an open and flexible technological platform. It
is able to simplify the development of applications
independent from the hardware, from the operational
system and from the language they support.
Francis
Craig, chairman of Tao says, "The aim of Intent
is the possibility to utilize applications conceived
for a particular device on another device. For
example, the possibility of making a game for
digital TV set-top-boxes or for a console work
even on a mobile phone, without having to spend
more money to adapt the application to the mobile
phone’s different operational system."
Old partners
have also taken part in the refinancing of Tao
Group, among which Sony’s investment arm, NEC,
and Sharp, but not Motorola which already took
part in the three previous rounds, (to date the
capital received by Tao from its creation in 1992
is more than $30 million). "We will utilize the
new financing for the diffusion of Intent,” continues
Craig. “Sharp has already announced the integration
of our multimedia software in all of its products.
Other clients are Grundig and JVC."
According
to Craig the sectors which will shortly guarantee
most revenue are video games and gaming, both
online and via mobile phones. So in this direction
last week Tao established a strategic agreement
with Terraplay Systems, a Swedish supplier of
technological platforms for online and mobile
phone gaming. The core product of the Stockholm-based
company is GAS, Game Access Server, for video
games editors, which is compatible with various
platforms among which Windows, Pocket PC, PlayStation,
Symbian OS and Java.
|