03/17/2009

SCI FI Powers Up Digital Gaming Business

Los Angeles, CA (March 17, 2009) – Leading cable network SCI FI Channel has partnered with Acclaim Games to develop a new series of free Massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG). The partnership will offer SCI FI’s players a more robust and imaginative series of immersive casual games that embody the broad appeal of the SCI FI brand.

SCI FI recently announced the formation of SCI FI Ventures, a portfolio of media and non-media businesses, created to transcend the television screen and leverage the deep affinity the SCI FI audience has with the most main stream and profitable genre world-wide. Among the SCI FI Ventures portfolio is SCI FI Games, leveraging the popularity of sci-fi/fantasy genre based titles and passion SCI FI fans have for video games. SCI FI and Acclaim will jointly develop new-to-world games, with plans to extend the new properties to other platforms, products, and forms of media. “We strive to entertain our consumers with unique imagination-based content across all platforms,” said Dave Howe, President of SCI FI. “Acclaim’s expertise in game development will enable us to provide a deeply immersive and engaging game experience.”

With close to 10 million players today, Acclaim Games, the successor of Acclaim Entertainment, is an online game company focused on bringing best-in-class games to consumers in North America and Europe. Since its reformation in 2006, the company has released twelve games, including its popular titles 9Dragons, 2Moons, and The Chronicles of Spellborn. “Social gaming is a great fit with the SCI FI brand,” said Howard Marks, President of Acclaim Games. “By combining SCI FI’s deep connection to its audience with Acclaim’s online gaming expertise, the partnership will continue the evolution of traditional entertainment into online gaming.”

Brand Sense Partners (BSP), a Los Angeles-based business development consultancy, sourced and negotiated the partnership on behalf of SCI FI. BSP works with SCI FI to identify new business areas in which to further extend the SCI FI brand. “The SCI FI Channel is one of the most forward thinking cable networks in the marketplace and their vision of delivering an integrated and unified sci-fi genre experience across media, product and service categories is truly unique,” said Ramez Toubassy, President of Brand Sense Partners. “The partnership with Acclaim will position SCI FI at the forefront of games in this genre.”

The new games are expected to launch on scifi.com in April 2009.

About SCI FI Channel

SCI FI Channel is a television network where “what if” is what’s on. SCI FI fuels the imagination of viewers with original series and events, blockbuster movies and classic science fiction and fantasy programming, as well as a dynamic Web site (www.scifi.com) and magazine. Launched in 1992, and currently in 93 million homes, SCI FI Channel is a network of NBC Universal, one of the world’s leading media and entertainment companies.

About Acclaim Games

Acclaim is a revolutionary company with a familiar name. Three years and 7 million registered users ago, former Activision CEO Howard Marks purchased the Acclaim name looking to revive one of the video game industry’s former giants. With the help of renowned game director David Perry, Marks succeeded. Today, Acclaim offers some of the finest in multiplayer online gaming while using a new, free to play business model. Acclaim strives to offer its users a fun, community-oriented experience with a selection of titles ranging from casual browser games to hardcore MMOs. To learn more, visit www.acclaim.com

About Brand Sense Partners

Established in 2001, Brand Sense Partners, LLC (BSP) is a strategic new business development consultancy with an integrated turnkey infrastructure designed to execute the firm’s recommendations. BSP fosters growth in new categories of business for its clients by leveraging brand equity and other strategic assets. Clients focus on their core businesses while BSP’s team of industry experts develops the strategy through market research and in-depth analysis, negotiates the deals and manages the new lines of business. The BSP approach reduces capital costs, risk and time to market resulting in new, profitable and accelerated growth for its clients. Headquartered in Los Angeles, BSP manages more than 200 partnerships for its Fortune 500 clients with approximately $1.5 Billion in retail sales in the consumer products, media, technology, celebrity and fashion industries. For more information, please visit www.bsp.com.