Cohort Studios news

San Francisco, CA (February 4, 2010) – Havok™ today announced that it has signed Cohort Studios into its Independent Developer Program. Cohort will have access to the company’s full suite of cutting-edge, award-winning products and technologies including Havok Animation™, Havok AI™, Havok Behavior™, Havok Cloth™, Havok Destruction™, and Havok Physics™.

"A key part of Cohort's business strategy revolves around the concept of 'Partners in Development' - working together with other key players in the games industry to help manage cost and risk", said Lol Scragg, CEO of Cohort Studios. "With this in mind, we're extremely excited to have joined Havok's Independent Developer Program. By gaining access to Havok's entire suite of technologies, we'll be able to turn around concept demos and prototypes in much shorter timescales, at less financial risk, and expand our cross-platform expertise in the process."

The Independent Developer Program enables independent game studios around the globe to execute their creative visions using Havok’s premium, developer-preferred middleware technology. The Program helps studios minimise the overall risk and high cost associated with internal creation of the tools and technologies required to power today’s sophisticated video and PC games.

Bruce McNeish, Cohort Studios’ CTO adds, "Our in-house engine, Praetorian Tech™, has been designed from the ground up for extensibility and easy integration with middleware. Havok’s program allows us full access to the company’s many fantastic technologies, and, in tandem with Praetorian, means we now have a very broad creative palette to draw from. With the Havok agreement, we can integrate cutting-edge technology into our prototypes at an early stage. This will give our teams more freedom to concentrate on the implementation of unique gameplay and internal technologies to differentiate us in the market, while giving publishers a far better idea of how the final product will play, mitigating risk all round."

“We are absolutely thrilled to be working with the highly-motivated and creative team at Cohort,” said David O’Meara, Managing Director of Havok. “Cohort’s focus on gameplay innovation and scalable production practices, when combined with Havok’s technologies and support system, will make a real difference to the gamer’s experience.”

Havok's modular suite of tools puts power in the hands of creators, empowering them to reach new standards of believability and interactivity in video games. Havok’s products include access to a powerful and flexible set of art tools tailored to work within a studio’s particular production pipeline and assistance from the most experienced support team in the middleware industry. All of Havok’s software tools are fully multithreaded and cross-platform optimised.

Havok’s Web site ( www.Havok.com) offers downloadable versions of Havok’s Animation, Behavior, and Physics software.

About Havok

Havok, an Intel company, was founded in Dublin, Ireland in 1998, and is the premier provider of interactive software and services for digital media creators in the games and movie industries. Havok works in partnership with the world’s best-known game developers, including Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony. Havok’s cross-platform, professionally supported technology is available for the Xbox 360™ video game and entertainment system, PLAYSTATION®3 computer entertainment system, PSP®, Wii™, and PC Games for Windows. Havok’s combination of superior technology and dedication to delivering for its customers has led to the company’s technologies being used in nearly 250 of the world’s best-known game titles, including Assassin’s Creed, Halo 3 and Bioshock. Havok products have also been used to drive special effects in movies such as Quantum of Solace, Harry Potter, and The Order of The Phoenix, and The Matrix. Havok has offices in Dublin, San Francisco, Calcutta, Munich, and Tokyo. For more information on Havok, visit www.havok.com.

About Cohort Studios

Cohort Studios was born in 2006 and is now entering its fifth year of business. As one of the leading game development studios in the UK, Cohort is registered as an official developer across all current home console formats. Comprising a team of over 50 people, and based in the vibrant Scottish city of Dundee, Cohort Studios is wholly owned by its three founding directors; Lol Scragg (CEO), Bruce McNeish (CTO) and Darran Thomas (CCO), who between them have over 43 years of experience in game development, having worked on projects for companies as diverse as Psygnosis, Bullfrog, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, Electronic Arts (EA) and Visual Science. Cohort is responsible for bringing the hugely successful Buzz!™ Junior franchise to the PlayStation 3 platform, and is currently working on an exciting project for a major publisher. Cohort Studios is also proud to be the first Scottish game developer to be a recognised Investor in People, a UK government-backed business improvement framework that has a special focus on employee relations. For more information, please visit www.cohortstudios.com.

U.S. media inquiries please contact:

Double Forte for Havok

Michelle Curran; Susan Kramer

415/848-8120; 415/848-8113

mcurran@double-forte.com; skramer@double-forte.com

U.K. media inquiries please contact:

Peppermint P on behalf of Cohort Studios

Tony Coles; Keef Sloan

+44 (0) 207 240 2645

tony.coles@peppermintp.com; keef.sloan@peppermintp.com