Antix Releases Game Development Kit (GDK)

– Developers creating casual, advanced casual and premium native games for consumers to copy and share across phones, TVs and other connected devices –

30th April, 2010: Reading, England – Antix releases v1.0 of its free GDK to support publishers, developers and retail channels delivering networked, native games that consumers can copy and share across multiple screens irrespective of screen size, input device, OS, CPU and fields of use including mobile phones, TVs and STBs.

The GDK outputs the cross-platform high performance Antix Game Player ATX format; similar in concept to MP3 for music, ATX games can be deployed ubiquitously across devices without the problems of performance traditionally associated with such flexibility and power.

The GDK includes the complete toolset required to enable developers to code and produce ATX-formatted games, define DRM rules, and test the games on a PC. The GDK is free of charge to registered developers. It presents standard industry APIs (OpenKODE®, OpenGL® ES) and integrates with Microsoft® Visual Studio®, Eclipse™, or the developer's own tool chain.

Using the toolset developers create a fully-signed, debugged and deployable game, ready for certification as a binary portable file across multiple screens. This control means that developers targeting phones, TVs and other devices do not have to be reduced to running games on emulated players on a PC; instead the GDK includes a native PC version of the Antix Game Player. The Eclipse or Visual Studio-based IDE comes tailored with GDK-specific plug-in features that allow binary portable games to be compiled and bundled with related assets and manifest data at the click of a button. The resultant single ‘atx’ file is ready for testing, signing, deployment and of course, playing.

“ATX is the Antix Game Player format; this is similar in concept to MP3 for music. Developers access a comprehensive suite of tools to convert their native games to our format which can then be run on multiple Antix-enabled platforms and devices without change; the efficiency helps developers, and the Antix GDK does this very well. However, it is the addressing of consumer needs that is the most fundamental requirement. Consuming games should be as flexible as consuming music, video and all users’ other media, in other words, they want to play from any device and then they want to copy and also share those games with friends and family and be part of communities both on and off network. Antix’ unique and patented secure format allows game services created with the Antix GDK to be deployed and then used by consumers in the way that they want, even in a highly fragmented market, all while protecting the rights and revenues of the publisher”, said Francis Charig, Antix’s Chief Executive.

Nalin Sharma, CEO of Puzzlekings comments, “Antix is the first company to articulate what the multi-screen story means for consumers and that’s of inordinate value to developers and of course to carriers with their plethora of diverse platforms. The Antix cross-platform format makes it possible for consumers to access their games on any device at home or on the move and to distribute them virally, sharing via WiFi, Bluetooth, through social networking sites and so on. The proposition uniquely includes the security that is necessary to protect the investment of Puzzlekings and other developers, essential for this to work in practice.”

Connect 2 Media CEO Eric Hobson remarks: “Antix Game Player represents a huge step forward for the industry. Cross platform game publishing becomes economically viable, and for publishers like Connect 2 Media massive new distribution channels open up.”

AI Factory CEO and founder Jeff Rollason comments: “The Antix GDK has been a powerful, stable, and easy to use kit that has made porting our games to the Antix platform a smooth and painless exercise. From the documentation, to the configurable PC runtime, to the project samples, everything we needed to hit the floor running was there and worked perfectly. Being able to use our C++ libraries unchanged has also been a massive help, and ensures the highest performance across the range of AGP supported devices.”

Rough Cookie CEO Danny Hoffman comments: “We have found that the Antix Player delivers the same performance from the platform as we experience using the native tools. The AGP tool chain was easy to get to grips with and where we needed support from Antix during the development we found it to be first-rate and very responsive. In three months we successfully ported three games. This is exceptional when you consider that this allows us to target multiple screens and platforms from each game’s single code base.”

Anders Nilsson, founder and CTO of Polarbit says: "Polarbit’s core business philosophy is delivering a consistent high quality gaming experience across as many platforms as possible. Our Fuse development platform allows us to utilize fully the potential of the Antix Game Player and quickly bring our titles to upcoming AGP enabled devices and the market opportunities it opens."

The Antix Game Player (AGP) is an on-device software client for native games services licensed to multiple tier one device makers. Antix now provides resources and services for storing games and related assets in a virtual warehouse, making it easy and cost-effective for publishers and developers to showcase and distribute games in Antix format to multiple sales channels in a controlled manner.

As well as the developer tools Antix’s game service includes a comprehensive, certification service, store as well as the warehouse and its on-device software client. Consumers using the Antix service can play their games across multiple screens irrespective of platform variations. Content can be distributed virally via the cloud or off-network from one device to another such as from a TV to a phone or a PC to an STB, alleviating bandwidth problems for carriers whilst the payment transaction is still handled via the service provider’s store. Numerous business models are supported such as advanced ‘Try Before You Buy’, available both on the device or directly in consumers’ PC browsers connected to a store.

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