Theresa Pulido Susan Breshears Creative labs, Inc. Copithorne & Bellows
Creative also announced today that it has begun shipping 3D Blaster for 486 VL-BUS PCs as scheduled. The company also said that its pioneering drive into 3D graphics continues to attract broad support from the industry's leading game developers, as more than 200 developers have pledged their support to 3D Blaster. In addition to the five titles included with 3D Blaster, more than 20 3D titles supporting Creative's current 3D platform are expected to ship in the coming months.
With its 3D Blaster, Creative has established the PC entertainment platform for the more than 20 million 486-based systems installed today. Creative is now extending that standard to systems that incorporate the fast-selling Pentium processor. Together with its Sound Blaster AWE32 wave-table synthesis that supports 3D positional audio, 3D Blaster provides consumers a complete 3D entertainment solution under the Blaster brand name.
"Three dimensional gaming is one of the hottest areas in personal computing, and we want to make sure consumers and game developers have a 3D standard that they can adopt today and will carry them into the future," said Hock Leow, vice president of graphics and video products for Creative Technology. "For consumers, our 3D Blaster products carry a brand name that they have grown to trust. And for developers, we are providing a reliable bridge that allows them to leverage their 486-based development efforts for the development of games for Pentium-based PCs. Over the next year, Microsoft's Reality Lab and Direct 3D APIs for Windows 95 will set the standard for 3D games and business applications. Developers of Windows 95 3D applications and games using these APIs will see their products automatically accelerated by the advanced features of the 3D Blaster."
"Creative's 3D Blaster is taking computer gaming to a new level and provides customers the ability to experience the advanced 2D and 3D capabilities of Windows 95," said Brad Silverberg, Senior Vice President, Personal Systems Division, Microsoft Corporation. "With the 3D Blaster family, Creative is delivering 3D solutions for all Windows 95 users, from those with 486 machines to Pentiums. This is the latest example of how Creative Labs, as a key partner to Microsoft, has helped to advance multimedia on Windows, from audio through 3D."
Like the VL-bus version of 3D Blaster, Creative's 3D Blaster for Pentium-based systems is a graphics display card with hardware-accelerated 3D rasterization that brings workstation-level graphics performance to the PC at consumer pricing. This new PCI-based product will be a Plug-n-Play system, fully compatible with Windows 95, Windows 3.1, and DOS systems.
3D Blaster for PCI systems is expected to street at $349 and will be bundled with a selected suite of 3D software titles authored specifically to take advantage of the high-performance graphics capabilities of 3D Blaster and the increased power of the Pentium processor. The Verité chip from Rendition, Inc. has been selected as the processor that best complements the Pentium processor for this 3D Blaster.
"The combination of the advanced graphics capabilities of 3D Blaster and the raw processing power of the Pentium gives us a development platform that takes PC gaming to an entirely new level," said Peter Molyneux, vice president at EA/Bullfrog. "We have been using Creative's development tools and graphics library for game development on the VL version of 3D Blaster and now can leverage all that work into development of games for Pentium PCs. Creative's approach is providing us a reliable, extensible standard for advanced 3-D game development."
Creative's 3D Blaster products are unique in their ability to draw perspective correct texture mapped images. 3D Blaster presents textured images that do not warp, swim, or shake in a distracting manner.
Creative's 3D Blaster for Pentium-based PCs is expected to be available in the Spring of 1996 through the company's worldwide network of computer dealers, specialty retailers and mass merchants.
Creative's 3D Blaster for 486-based PCs is now shipping and is available in hundreds of outlets in the U.S. alone, including CompUSA, Computer City and Best Buy. With an estimated street price of $349, 3D Blaster includes a suite of five next-generation immersive 3D titles with real-time action from some of the world's leading game developers. If purchased separately, these titles are valued at more than $250. The titles, specifically adapted for 3D Blaster, are EA/Bullfrog's Hi-Octane and Magic Carpet Plus, Papyrus' NASCAR Racing, Looking Glass Technologies' Flight Unlimited, and Fenris Wolf's Rebel Moon.
3D Blaster for the 486 uses the games version of the GLINT® 3D processor chip co-developed by Creative and 3Dlabs Inc. This processor best complements the performance of the 486 processor.
In addition, Creative expects more than 20 new games from hot developers soon to be available including titles such as Battle Arena Toshinden (leading Sony PSX fighting game) from Playmates Interactive Entertainment, Al Unser Arcade Racing and SU-27 Flanker from Mindscape, Fatal Racing and Descent from Interplay, MIA from Simis, Ltd/Time Warner Interactive, Polychrome from Cybelle, The Aquanaut's Holiday from ArtDink, and Actua Soccer from Gremlin.
"We expect advanced game play on the PC to be a huge hit this holiday season and the early interest and demand for Creative's 3D Blaster indicates 3-D gaming will live up to our expectations," said Larry Mondry, executive vice president of merchandising for CompUSA, the nation's leading retailer of microcomputers and related products and services. "Creative has a knack for recognizing a trend and creating a standard that benefits consumers and the industry. We saw them do it in audio with Sound Blaster, and it appears they're doing it again with 3D Blaster."
Creative will showcase 3D Blaster to a potential audience of 53 million households in three live broadcasts scheduled for November 16th at 8pm, November 17th at 7pm, and November 18th between 12:30 am and 2 am, Eastern Standard Time. These broadcast times are among QVC's mosts widely-viewed slots for its Electronic Toys Program, which features a variety of electronic consumer products, personal computers, software and computer enhancement products.
The Creative Labs 3D Blaster for the 486 operates as a 2D Windows accelerator and 3D graphics accelerator. It comes with 2 megabytes of memory. The board is a Plug-n-Play systems fully compatible with Windows 95, Windows 3.1, DOS and a variety of popular games and applications written to Windows. Minimum system requirements suggested for use with 3D Blaster for 486-based systems include, IBM-compatible PC VESA VL bus, 486-DX2 running at 66 MHz, 8 MB RAM and Windows 3.1 or higher.
Creative Technology Ltd. develops, manufactures and markets a family of sound and video multimedia products for IBM-compatible PCs. The company's Sound Blaster sound platform enables IBM-compatible PCs to produce high-quality audio for entertainment, educational, music and productivity applications, and has been accepted as the industry standard sound platform for PC-based software.
Creative Technology Ltd. was incorporated in 1983 and is based in Singapore. Creative Technology's subsidiaries include Creative Labs, Inc., E-mu Systems, Inc., and ShareVision Technology, Inc. Creative also has other subsidiaries in the U.S, Europe, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, Malaysia and China. The Company's stock is traded on the NASDAQ under the symbol CREAF.
Sound Blaster is a registered trademark and Blaster is a trademark of Creative Technology Ltd. E-mu is a registered trademark of E-mu Systems, Inc. and ShareVision is a registered trademark of ShareVision Technology, Inc. All other products mentioned herein are trademarks of their respective owners and are hereby recognized as such.
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Creative Labs, Inc.