SIERRA STUDIOS ANNOUNCES EMPIRE EARTH™
Epic Real-Time Strategy Game Spanning 500,000 Years
to Ship in 2001
BELLEVUE, WA (March 31, 2000) - Sierra
Studios™ and Rick Goodman's Stainless Steel
Studios, Inc. today announced a new real-time
strategy game in development, called Empire Earth™.
This is the first title from Stainless Steel Studios,
but not the first for Rick Goodman, who was lead
designer for the best-selling and critically acclaimed
strategy game Age of Empires™. Empire Earth
is scheduled to ship in the first half of 2001.
Building on the success of Age of Empires, Empire
Earth covers a much broader spectrum of time and
incorporates far more advanced 3D technology.
It also has several new features and gameplay
elements that will deliver a more robust experience
to the devoted real-time strategy gamer.
"We searched for the right publisher for
over a year and are very excited to be working
with Sierra Studios," said Rick Goodman,
president of Stainless Steel. "Sierra Studios'
impressive strategy to work with strong internal
development and the best third party developers
is quite apparent by virtue of the deluge of awards
and high quality games in their lineup."
"The scope of this game is very impressive
- the best I've seen in this genre," said
Jim Veevaert, vice president of marketing for
Sierra Studios. "We are thrilled to be working
with Stainless Steel Studios to bring Empire Earth
to market and know if anyone can accomplish this
enormous task, the folks at Stainless Steel will
surpass our expectations."
No other real-time strategy game offers as comprehensive
a setting or as customizable a gaming experience.
The game combines stunning technology with robust,
strategic gameplay in a setting that spans the
history of the world. Empire Earth begins with
the discovery of fire (circa 500,000 BC) and concludes
several hundred years in the future. Empire Earth
is arguably the most promising game on the horizon
in the real-time strategy genre.
Stainless Steel Studios, Inc., headquartered in
Cambridge, Massachusetts, is a game design and
development organization. First founded in 1998
by Rick Goodman, lead designer and creator of
Microsoft's® Age of Empires™, Stainless
Steel Studios, Inc.'s goal is produce advanced
real-time strategy titles for the new millennium.
Goodman was the winner of the 1998 Computer Game
Developer Conference's 'Annual Achievement Award
for Game Design and Development'. The company's
first title, Empire Earth, a sprawling historical
epic covering 500,000 years of human history,
is being published by Sierra Studios.
Sierra On-Line, Inc. http://www.sierra.com/
is one of the original developers and largest
worldwide publishers of interactive entertainment
and productivity software. Sierra is a division
of Havas Interactive, a global leader in interactive
content, and is one of the world's largest publishers
of education, entertainment and home productivity
software. Its divisions, Blizzard Entertainment,
Coktel, Knowledge Adventure®, Sierra™
and WON.net™ are famous for releasing critically
acclaimed and award winning titles. Havas has
operations in the US and in Europe and is a subsidiary
of the French publishing house Havas, part of
Vivendi Communications.