14 DAY TRIAL // GreenScreen Interactive Software has announced that it intends to move into the game market, as the company has just been formed in New York. It was also quick to announce its first business moves and that it is already developing a game.
The first acquisition of GreenScreen is Zoo, a developer based in Sheffield, United Kingdom, a company that publishes the Premier Manager series of football management sims. Another company called DSI has also been acquired to be merged with Zoo and become Zoo Games, a subdivision of GreenScreen which will exclusively target the "the emerging mass-market sector". In other words, the subdivision will mainly target the casual games market, a niche gaming market where the costs of development are rather low while the potential return of investment is high.
Ron Chaimowitz, who serves as the Chief Executive Officer of GreenScreen, declared, "The acquisition of these two publishers provides us with several advantages, including world-class management, infrastructure, distribution, high-profile licenses and an exciting lineup of products for the burgeoning mass-market sector". Ron Chaimowitz had previous working experience at GT Interactive, which is now part of Infogrames.
Zoo Games named its first project as the Nintendo Wii restaurant simulator called Order Up!, which is taunted as being a "full-featured cooking and restaurant management video game that promises players a much richer and more entertaining experience by expanding beyond basic slice and dice gameplay". It will apparently compete with the already established Cooking Mama titles which made their way to the Wii and the DS.
Lee Cummings, who is creative director for Zoo Games, declared, "The emerging cooking genre has significant potential beyond the simple, linear gameplay offered by other games on the market". When the game launches, we'll see if we are really dealing with "the ultimate cooking sim" or if it's another Cooking Mama clone. No release date has been announced yet.