Village Gamer

Toronto – SilverBirch Inc. has announced that it has completed the sale of its 60% stake in Crossroad Mobile, LLC. For
nominal consideration, the assets and related liabilities have been transferred back to the purchasers. Under the agreement, the effective closing date is September 30, 2008.

The transaction will result in the elimination of just over $40K of debt in relation to a Secured Promissory Note and reduces further dilution for SVB’s shareholder with the immediate cancellation of 1,800,000 warrants.
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Annex|Pro, a well-known value-added technology solutions reseller based in Vancouver, is celebrating its 25th anniversary with a series of educational seminars. Congratulations to Kerry, Byron and the whole team at Annex|Pro!

November 24 – Eyeon Generation World Tour: Eyeon Generation is a breakthrough family of products that satisfy the demand for an end-to-end VFX environment and delivers timeline editing with up to 4K disk based playback, backed by 20 years of Fusion compositing development. The Generation workflow seamlessly integrates and collaborates with all eyeon products as well as removing the interoperability bottleneck with other products.

November 25 – Matrox MXO2 – Streamline Your Apple Final Cut Studio Workflow: Discover the Matrox Hardware Advantage with MXO2, a portable, affordable, and complete I/O device for the Mac. Be among the first to see this award-winning device in action.

November 26 – Render Farms 101: From Rendering to Reality in no Time: Want to learn more about render farm management? PipelineFX expert Troy Brooks has extensive experience in film and game development workflows, and will show you why using the right tools will improve productivity and increase content quality while optimizing hardware resources.
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Toronto-based distribution company, Breakthrough Entertainment announced Nat Abraham as its Head of Distribution. Mr. Abraham will oversee daily operations including worldwide sales, pre-sales and co-production opportunities.

Most recently Head of Canadian Sales and Acquisitions at Breakthrough, Mr. Abraham has been instrumental in the company’s recent acquisitions including Science of the Senses, Fraud Squad and The World Without Us.  He spearheaded Breakthrough’s collaboration with Canadian-based production company, Partners in Motion producers of Crime Stories, Re-Inventors and Disasters of the Century, all of which are distributed by Breakthrough Entertainment. Under his direction, Breakthrough also became one of the largest suppliers of third party factual programming  as well as high definition concerts to Canadian broadcasters including Coldplay, Gwen Stefani and The Tragically Hip to name a few.

“Nat has had a tremendous impact on our distribution division,” said Peter Williamson, Partner/Executive Producer, Breakthrough Films & Television “As our new Head of Distribution he will continue to drive international sales as well as our growing library of programming.”

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Digital Games-Based Learning Company scores Best in Show and Best Service/Product Provider at DevLearn 2008

DISTIL Interactive Ltd., an Ottawa-based leader in the use of digital gaming technology as a corporate learning environment beat a field of 40 learning technology vendors to win two key awards at last week’s DevLearn conference in San Jose CA.

The Best in Show was awarded for the digital learning environment “Business in Balance: Implementing an Environmental Management System” developed in collaboration with the Canadian Standards Association (CSA) teaches organizations how to develop an environmental system for their workplace. The Best Product/Service Provider category was awarded for across-the-board product excellence.

“This is an exciting achievement by the DISTIL and CSA teams,” said CEO Robert Thompson. “While we strongly believe in digital gaming’s power as a corporate learning tool, being recognized by the attendees at North America’s largest international e-Learning showcase is a great endorsement. We believe a key ingredient in our Best Product/Service Provider award was our integrated assessment technology which mines the game-play data to provide feed-back to learners and to provide their organization with detailed performance information.”
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Experience All-New Game Tempo Control, Authentic College Atmospheres and EA SPORTS ESPN Classic Tournament of Legends

Electronic Arts Inc. has announced that NCAA® Basketball 09 ships to retailers today in North America, delivering a college basketball experience that captures the emotion, intensity and atmosphere of a real college basketball game. Featuring former UCLA star Kevin Love of the Minnesota Timberwolves on its cover, NCAA Basketball 09 showcases a new, strategic college basketball gameplay experience that challenges gamers to replicate their school’s style of play and set the game tempo to win.

Experience the electricity of game night with the band playing fight songs, the student section leading the cheers and ESPN college basketball broadcasters Dick Vitale, Brad Nessler and Erin Andrews providing the commentary. Whether your school plays up tempo looking to push the ball in transition, runs a half-court offense that utilizes the clock and limits possessions or features a balanced attack that combines transition offense with set plays, NCAA Basketball 09 rewards the strategic gamer and emphasizes team specific styles of play.

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EA SPORTS announced today that 14 international commentary packs in FIFA Soccer 09 will be available to download free on both the PlayStation Network for PLAYSTATION 3 and on Xbox Live for Xbox 360. For the first time, fans worldwide can now download and experience all language commentary packs featuring different commentators from all over the world while playing FIFA Soccer 09.

FIFA Soccer 09 currently features specific languages by region but beginning today gamers can download and experience play-by-play commentary from other regions of the world. This will deliver a new international experience to FIFA Soccer 09 fans.

The following commentary packs will be available beginning today:

Language – Commentator’s Names

English Andy Gray Martin Tyler
French Herve Mathoux Franck Sauzée
Italian Giuseppe Bergomi Fabio Caressa
German Tom Bayer Sebastian Hellman
Spanish Paco González Manolo Lama
Mexico Perro Bermúdez Ricardo Pelaez
Dutch Youri Mulder Evert Ten Napel
European Portuguese David Carvalho Hélder Conduto
Hungarian Richard Faragó István B. Hajú
Russian Yuri Rozanov Vasily Solojov
Swedish Glenn Hysén Henrik Strömblad
Czech Bosák Jaromír Petr Sv?cený
Polish W?odzimierz Szaranowicz Dariusz Szpakowski
Brazilian Portugese Paulo Vinícius Coelho Nivaldo Prieto

Additionally, FIFA Soccer 09 offers a whole new commentary pack for download on the PlayStation Network and Xbox Marketplace. An additional English commentary pack featuring Andy Townsend and Clive Tyldesley previously unavailable on any version of FIFA Soccer 09 is available for download for only $4.99 US.