Rage in News Fest
New European distributor, new Publishing Director and new game engine for Andy McNab titles, oh, and bye-bye Dave Jones
There's plenty going on at Rage this February. On Friday the company announced that it has entered into an agreement with Alltainment GmbH to help sell and distribute its games in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Rage has made this move as part of plans to re-focus its business across Europe. Not content with that though, Rage has also appointed a new Publishing Director, former Virgin Interactive and Infogrames (UK) MD Roy Campbell, a man with some 20 years sales and management experience, and the perfect figurehead for the company's re-focusing campaign. Further to both of these announcements though, Rage has also announced a deal with MathEngine, a middleware technology group, to license and utilize its Karma physics package in the forthcoming military-action games featuring Andy McNab. The final Rage-related story of last week though is the sale of the company's Dundee-based studio to its original owner Dave Jones. Under the terms of the original acquisition agreement, Jones stood to receive a further £1m of Rage shares before 10th March 2002, but the new agreement will not see these issued. Under the terms of the 'Restructuring Agreement', original Rage Games Scotland shareholders will receive in aggregate £150,000 of Rage shares, half the amount due to them in the original agreement. Rage itself will not receive any financial consideration, although it has been issued with 20% of the share capital of Jones' newly formed studio Real Time Worlds and retains worldwide publishing rights for Mobile Forces, which continues development at its new home. Related Feature - The Ideal Crash