ENGAGE SIGNS EXCLUSIVE CONTENT DEAL
WITH BILLBOARD LIVE!
Simulated Club Experience Online To Feature Celebrity Interviews, Live Performances, Downloadable Clips, Contests, Trivia Games, and Top 10 Charts from Billboard Magazine
IRVINE, CALIFORNIA (August 1, 1996) -- ENGAGE Games Online announced today that it has entered into an exclusive agreement with Billboard Entertainment Marketing to develop and carry Billboard Live! Online - a cyber-version of the Billboard Live! clubs. This comprehensive music content area will become an important part of the new online multi-player games and entertainment service and represents a major content addition to the growing ENGAGE stable of content. The first Billboard Live! venue will open Sunday August 4, 1996 on the famed Sunset Strip in Los Angeles.
Billboard Live! has been designed as a series of luxurious yet intimately themed night clubs that merge 21st century technology with an unparalleled live music, dining and dancing experience. Each multi-media complex will showcase up-and-coming as well as established musical acts. Billboard Live! patrons will be able to access ENGAGE and other high-tech features via touch screens located at their tables. In the future, patrons will also be able to interact with guests of other Billboard Live! locations throughout the world via ENGAGE. Online players will also feel as if they are right in the middle of the action by clicking on cameras strategically placed throughout the club, chatting with celebrities in the venues' VIP Board room, hearing and viewing performance as they happen (or downloading them later) and experiencing what happens backstage before, during and after a concert, all overseen by a Billboard Live! "Web Concierge" located onsite. Additional online plans include music trivia games, contests, tour information and access to key charts which will be available before the magazine hits the streets each week.
"In addition to many high-end multi-player games to be offered on ENGAGE, the service will also contain singularly unique and innovative entertainment content that reaches a broad cross-section of the online audience," stated Jeff Leibowitz, President of ENGAGE. Billboard has always been and continues to be the definitive name in the music industry. We are extremely pleased to be working with Billboard Marketing to develop a sophisticated consumer online music-related experience in conjunction with the new and exciting "Billboard Live" clubs.
Keith Pressman, President of Billboard Live! added, "It is our goal at Billboard Live! to showcase the music industry's hottest new artists at our club while continuing to keep pace with the cutting edge world of multimedia. I am confident that through our agreement with ENGAGE, we will also be able to present online visitors worldwide with the same high quality entertainment they would enjoy at our clubs."
Online users will access ENGAGE games and other entertainment content through consistent and intuitive Windows 95-based graphically rich 2-D and 3-D interfaces, regardless of whether they access ENGAGE from the major online services or from various World Wide Web sites on the Internet. In addition, chat areas, bulletin boards and other service areas will be accessible through the graphical front end.
ENGAGE will feature an impressive array of high-end multi-player games as well as some less intense fare for non-gamer members of the family. Almost all of ENGAGE's titles are worldwide exclusives including such best sellers as Descent Online, Castles II, the US Chess Federation, MUD II and AD&D: Descent to Undermountain from Interplay Productions; Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness from Blizzard Entertainment; Total Control Football from Philips Media; Rolemaster: Magestorm and Splatterball from Interworld Productions.
Also available on ENGAGE are Sim City 2000 from Maxis and high-profile, broad-appeal entertainment content such as casino games from Caesars Palace Virtual Casino, comedy via The Improvisation Online and comprehensive music content from the new cyber-version of the Billboard Live! multimedia venues. ENGAGE will offer as many as 15 games by the end of 1996 and then plans to add about one additional game each month.
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