Press Releases
TEN Receives $12 Million in Financing
Wasserstein Perella Ventures and Sembawang/UOB lead latest round
SAN FRANCISCO April 10, 1997 Total Entertainment Network (TEN) today announced the completion of a new round of investment capital financing totaling more than $12 million. The market and technology leader in online multiplayer gaming, TEN has enjoyed immediate success in attracting customers to its subscription-based service, last month announcing it had reached the 25,000 paying subscriber milestone after just four months of commercial operation. The proceeds from this round of funding will be used for further content acquisition, technology upgrades and additions, as well as ongoing improvements to the TEN service. Wasserstein Perella Ventures and Sembawang Media/UOB led this round of financing, with the remainder of latest-round funding coming from financial investors and existing investors including Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, Vertex Management, Goldman Sachs, Ameritech, and Dominion Income Management Corp.
"Wasserstein and Sembawang represent two strategic additions to the deepest and strongest lineup of investors in our competitive space," said Jack Heistand, President and CEO of TEN. "With a deep knowledge base in media property creation and a very significant ISP presence in the Southeast Asian territories respectively, Wasserstein and Sembawang are valuable investment partners, today and in future. Further, the continued support from all major existing investors reaffirms the commitment to this space and the TEN vision in particular."
"Partnering with TEN is a key strategic investment for us, as we continue to identify and invest in new segments of the entertainment and media industries," said Townsend Ziebold, a managing director at Wasserstein Perella Ventures. "We believe that TEN has the management, technology, and business model to maintain its leadership position in the online gaming space, and we look forward to supporting the company's future success in this emerging market."
TEN has long been the leading proponent of exclusive online licensing the purchasing of exclusive online rights to hit computer games like Duke Nukem 3D and NASCAR Racing 2 and expects a portion of the newly-raised capital to be used to garner more such content. TEN leads the industry with 14 exclusives.
TEN also plans to expand from a technology standpoint, adding a series of SuperPOPs, high-performance "points of presence," from which its subscribers can access the TEN network. These SuperPOPs will support a network of regional "zones," similar to the national service already in place, but with reduced latency (as low as 140ms). Latency in this range (100 - 175ms) is widely acknowledged as the threshold for delivering several game genres, such as sports simulations and hand-to-hand fighting games, in an online, multiplayer format.
Improvements to the TEN service are expected to manifest in various forms, all of which are intended to further distance TEN from the competition in terms of performance and other areas subscriber experience. TEN has already unveiled two proprietary technologies, known as D.A.R.T. and B.U.L.L.E.T., which reduce latency and improve performance of certain fast-action games, including Quake and Duke Nukem 3D. These in-house technologies will be applied to future titles where appropriate. In addition, TEN will launch the next version of its service, TEN 1.2, in early May, and expects the raft of new features to meet with broad consumer approval.
Total Entertainment Network is the premier entertainment network for game playing consumers on the Internet. TEN has online rights to more than 25 games more than half of which are TEN exclusives by leading software publishers including 3D Realms Entertainment, Apogee, Blizzard, Eidos Interactive (formerly Domark), id Software, GT Interactive, Maxis, MicroProse,
Sierra Online/Papyrus, SSI and Westwood Studios. Based in San Francisco, TEN was formed in 1995 from the merger of Planet Optigon, Inc. and Outland, Inc. TEN received its initial funding from Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, with subsequent investors including: Ameritech; Goldman Sachs; Robertson, Stephens & Co. and Vertex Management.
For More Info, Call
TEN Press Contact:
Garth Chouteau
Tel: (415) 778-3774
Fax: (415) 778-3520
Internet:
garth@tenetwork.com
Copyright 1997
T E Network, Inc.
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