G4BOX Inc. and Wicked Interactive Ltd. announced yesterday that the ink is officially dry on an exclusive in-game advertising deal with IGA Worldwide for their hit free-to-play first person shooter Cross Fire.
The counterstrike-esque multiplayer first person shooter allows for up to 16 players to simultaneously battle online. Objective based missions and scenarios take place across a wide range of real world realistic locations and arenas. Not simply a point and shoot, Cross Fire also offers up a healthy selection of features and game modes including an exclusive ‘ghost match’ mode, a persistent stat-tracking and ranking system, integrated clan and in-game friends systems, and character customizations and realistic military weaponry.
“The Cross Fire beta launch has proven to be a tremendous success. The scale of the community building around the game has been astonishing and is still growing rapidly,” said Howard He, CEO of G4BOX Inc. “We are delighted to partner with G4BOX on Cross Fire. Its success has allowed us to partner with in-game advertising pioneer, IGA Worldwide, to pursue opportunities in this exciting and ground-breaking advertising environment,” added Garvin Yeung, CEO of Wicked Interactive Ltd.
Utilizing IGA Worldwide’s proprietary Radial 4.0 advertising SDK, Cross Fire will now offer brands and agencies the opportunity to display, update and geo-target their ads to a holy grail: the 18-34, tech savvy, male demographic.
Ed Bartlett, Vice President Europe for IGA Worldwide, said “Having pioneered ad-supported free-to-play premium games over the last three years, we are very excited to extend this model to Cross Fire, which has all of the necessary features for another huge success story in this category. IGA prides itself on a qualitative approach to ad inventory, and alongside contextual in-game billboards, users can also expect a sponsored tournament and leaderboards as well as subsidized branded content including new levels and arenas.”
Given that only a month and a half back IGA Worldwide sent out the ‘we need more money, or a buyer’ message, IGA Worldwide has been making signing a number of deals and agreements. Perhaps there’s something a bit more going on in the background that we’re privy to? Has IGA found a new investor? Are they simply trying to pump the value, prepping for a sale? Or…are they just doing a great job, doing what they do? Which ultimately leads us to, what the heck WAS that plea for help all about? Either way, things seem to be looking up for one of the leading in-game advertising providers. I guess we’ll simply have to wait and see exactly where they’re headed with these exciting announcements.
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