Rustic Canyon

New York, (January 25, 2010) – Live Gamer (www.livegamer.com), the leading global provider of total commerce solutions for microtransaction-based businesses spanning online games, virtual worlds and social networks, today announced significant upgrades to Elements, an enhanced technology platform for both primary and secondary markets.

Sony Online Entertainment LLC (SOE) is to become the first publisher to implement Elements and significant platform enhancements for powering microtransactions across their social, web and in-game channels. SOE and Live Gamer will work closely over the next quarter to seamlessly augment and upgrade SOE’s existing proprietary infrastructure. This collaboration will enable a unified cross-platform e-wallet and item merchandising experience within SOE’s traditional client-side PC online game business. Games to take advantage of the Live Gamer platform will include PoxNora®, Free Realms™, EverQuest® and EverQuest®II, as well as future titles.

Live Gamer’s advanced Elements microtransaction platform improves publishers’ ability to drive improved conversion rates, average revenue per user and retention through new tools such as an upgraded enterprise storefront, retail merchandising capabilities, advanced item offers and new analytics features for payment gateway optimization. Live Gamer’s Elements is ideal for browser-based games, social networking platforms, social applications and client-side MMOs and can be configured easily for different types of integration.

SIGNIFICANT PLATFORM UPGRADES INCLUDE:


•SaaS or on-premise installation: Leverage Live Gamer’s world-class hosting or run the platform inside publisher’s own data center
•Support for the global economy: Dynamic currency conversion and full support for localization
•Enhanced user management: Per user e-wallet policies including overdraft or maximum balances, the industry’s most advanced velocity limiting, full parental controls around spending limits, gifting policies
•Robust API support for integration into existing and 3rd party platforms, products, and applications: RSS-like data feed to build alerts, reports and actions around certain in-game economic activity
•Batch programming: Improves complex business logic to be performed at high speeds
•Enhanced storefront: Web-storefront supports both OpenSocial integration and Facebook connect.
•New reports build on industry leading analytics: Over 130 reports available including new reports showing revenue performance per payment gateway
•Advanced tools to manage complex product configurations such as combined physical/virtual bundles, subscriptions plus virtual currency bundles and others
•Recommendations and Promotions: Advanced merchandising such as upgraded recommendation engine and flexible discounting functionality
•Advanced merchandising and discounting functionality
QUOTES:


"The microtransaction industry has become increasingly specialized, and Live Gamer has helped us with advanced functionality that allows us to continually stay ahead of the curve in ecommerce,” said John Smedley, president, Sony Online Entertainment. “We chose Live Gamer to power our payments, merchandising and primary-secondary market solutions based on innovative technology, recognized track record in the market and an advanced, holistic approach.”

"SOE practically invented the subscription-based billing model for online games," said Andrew Schneider, president and Co-Founder, Live Gamer. "With Live Gamer’s one-stop shop for total commerce solutions, they’ll be able to integrate advanced commerce functionality and gain greater speed to market for its games. As publishers continue to build out increasingly robust in-game virtual item strategies, the need for a dedicated total commerce solution has become essential."

“Live Gamer has a long history of providing cutting-edge innovations that enable developers to succeed with virtual economy-based revenue models,” said William Grosso, CTO and SVP of Product for Live Gamer. “Our relationship with SOE is incredibly exciting and is additional validation that our tool chain supports anyone, from the smallest developer to the largest publisher.”

About Live Gamer

Live Gamer is the global leader of total commerce solutions for micro-transaction-based businesses. Spanning online games, virtual worlds, and social networks, Live Gamer provides an advanced offering that goes beyond monetization to drive core business metrics and optimize new transaction-based revenue streams. Combining its micro-transaction platform, primary and secondary market management, fraud and security solutions, scalable publisher support and international payment gateways, Live Gamer's technology has been adopted by leading publishers in gaming, social and entertainment including Acclaim, Funcom, NHN USA, Quepasa, MEG Toys and Sony Online Entertainment, supporting over 65 million users in 23 countries.

Founded in 2007, the company is backed by $26 million in venture funding from Charles River Ventures, FirstMark Capital, Kodiak Venture Partners, Rustic Canyon Partners, Triple Point Capital and Venrock. Live Gamer is headquartered in New York with offices in Los Angeles and Palo Alto, CA and Seoul, Korea. For more information, visit www.livegamer.com or connect with us on Twitter (@livegamer), Facebook or MySpace.

About Sony Online Entertainment

Sony Online Entertainment LLC (SOE) is a recognized worldwide leader in massively multiplayer online games which have entertained millions of players around the globe. SOE creates and delivers compelling entertainment for the personal computer, online, game console and wireless markets. Known for its blockbuster franchise EverQuest®, its successful online trading card game Legends of Norrath®, as well as the recent kids' phenomenon Free Realms™, SOE continues to raise the bar for online gaming and players worldwide. Headquartered in San Diego, with additional studios in Austin, Seattle, Denver, Tucson, and Taiwan, SOE has a slate of engaging, high-quality games currently in development across new genres for all platforms and audiences.

SOE, the SOE logo, EverQuest and PlanetSide are registered trademarks and Free Realms and Legends of Norrath are trademarks of Sony Online Entertainment LLC.

It’s with great excitement that we introduce the 2010 OnMedia 100. This fresh batch of the hottest emerging companies in digital advertising joins illustrious alumni and gives us a great deal of insight into the coming trends in monetization.

Last year was digital media’s trial by fire. Some online business models were forged in the flames; many more were burnt to a crisp. As we look out on 2010, we see a more hospitable landscape. Advertisers are increasingly selecting online surgical strikes over offline dynamite fishing. A fact to which 2010 OnMedia 100 winners Yieldex, Yield Software, and YieldBuild can happily attest.

The digital media industry has good reasons for its optimism. J.P. Morgan is projecting more than 10% growth in U.S. graphical advertising and more than 13% growth in U.S. search advertising, representing a marginal increase in spending of roughly $4.5 billion in the coming year. Many of these new dollars will be directed toward or by 2010 OnMedia 100 companies.

Given this backdrop of anticipated growth, it’s not surprising that we see so much activity among OnMedia 100 alumni. In the last year, billions of dollars in value have been created by recent OnMedia 100 winners, including Zynga’s eye-popping $180 million financing, Google’s $750 million acquisition of AdMob, and Apple’s $275 million acquisition of Quattro Wireless, as well as dozens of significant financings, including major rounds to alumni like Quantcast, Aggregate Knowledge, and Ensequence.

Venture investing in media and entertainment from Q4 2007 to Q3 2008 totaled $1.9 billion (according analysis from PricewaterhouseCoopers and the NVCA). The same period during the following year saw this total drop precipitously to $1.2 billion. Clearly the flight to quality saw OnMedia 100 companies outperform in attracting growth equity.

We have every expectation that the class of 2010 will perform just as well as past winners in attracting customers, capital, and acquirers. Companies like ADVERTISING NETWORKS AND EXCHANGES winner MediaMath are letting advertising agencies more effectively leverage online channels on behalf of their clients. While HubSpot is the digital marketing command center for thousands of mid-market companies.

The explosion of local services has made small the new big. Winners like Yodle and Yext are bringing the full power of the Internet to bear on local merchants by finding the right recipe of cost effectiveness and ease of use. Our COMMUNITY PLATFORMS category winner, Gilt Groupe, has found the seam between tough economic times and demand for luxury products, letting its members find attractive merchandise at even more attractive prices—creating a new distribution channel to brand-conscious consumers.

Coremetrics leads our WEB AND MEDIA ANALYTICS AND RESEARCH winners and is rapidly establishing itself as the pre-eminent toolbox for online marketers. Services like GumGum for online content distribution, AdSafe Media for contextually appropriate advertising, and Lattice Engines for analysis and planning tools, are tackling specific challenges in online optimization and monetization.

While these new online services are polishing the Internet advertising apple, the mobile sector continues to be an increasingly wild, wild west. Fueled by the rapidly escalating thumbs-race between giants like Apple, Google, Nokia, RIM, and Microsoft, the stage is set for tremendous innovation in the private company community (and impressive returns for private capital).

Our overall winner for the 2010 OnMedia 100, Millennial Media, has positioned itself as one of the leading mobile advertising networks. With competitors (and previous OnMedia 100 winners) AdMob and Quattro Wireless acquired by Google and Apple respectively, and armed with a recent round of financing, the company is clearly capitalizing on its already impressive position.

The 2010 OnMedia 100 winners have survived the upheaval of 2009 and are positioned to advance on the opportunities represented by the return to growth in the digital advertising sector. Congratulations—it looks like we made it.