GamesBeat 2009

SAN FRANCISCO - March 9, 2009 – VentureBeat, the leading online community and news outlet covering private companies and capital, today announced the speaker line-up for this year’s GamesBeat Conference. GamesBeat 2009 is the conference’s inaugural year and is the only gathering focused entirely on the business of games. Top speakers on this year’s schedule include Sony Online Entertainment’s President, John Smedley, 38 Studios founder and Major League Baseball All-Star Pitcher Curt Schilling, Creative Artists Agency game head Seamus Blakely and Bing Gordon of leading venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. The conference takes place on March 24, 2009 at the Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco.

“The line-up of speakers is a testament to the game industry’s interest in having an event focused entirely on business, especially in this environment where games are still growing but the economic climate is tough,” said Dean Takahashi, lead writer, digitalmedia for VentureBeat and organizer of GamesBeat. “We’re going to have a wide spectrum of start-ups, established leaders and the venture and finance communities all in one place for the first time ever.”

The full line-up of speakers at GamesBeat 2009 includes:

• Seamus Blackey, Creative Artists Agency

• Susan Bonds, 42 Entertainment

• Joel Brodie, Gamezebo

• Lars Buttler, Trion World Network

• Tim Chang, Norwest Venture Partners

• Susan Choe, Outspark

• Brett Close, 38 Studios

• N’Gai Croal, Newsweek

• Gareth Davis, Facebook

• David Edery, Author "Changing the Game"

• Jay Eum, Translink Capital

• Dennis Fong, Raptr

• Nick Fortugno, Rebel Monkey

• Mark Friedler, Worlds and Games

• Bing Gordon, Kleiner Perkins

• Graham Hopper, Disney Interactive Studios

• Jameson Hsu, Mochi Media

• Richard Huddy, Advanced Micro Devices

• Geoff Keighley, Spike TV

• John Keefer, Crispy Gamer

• Amy Jo Kim, Shufflebrain

• Mitch Lasky, Benchmark Capital

• Jeremy Liew, Lightspeed Venture Partners

• Jamil Moledina, Electronic Arts Partners

• Jason Oberfest, MySpace

• Michael Pachter, Wedbush Morgan Securities

• Rajat Paharia, Bunchball

• Mark Pincus, Zynga

• Shervin Pishevar, Social Gaming Network

• Janice Roberts, Mayfield Fund

• John Rizzo, Zeebo

• Curt Schilling, 38 Studios

• Colin Sebastian, Lazard Capital Markets

• John Smedley, Sony Online Entertainment

• Rahul Sood, HP’s VoodooPC Division

• Alex St.John, Wild Tangent

• Bernard Stolar, Sony and Sega (Former Head of the Games Business)

• Randy Stude, PC Gaming Alliance

• Gus Tai, Trinity Ventures

• Tony Tamasi, Nvidia

• Alex Terry, NeoEdge Networks

• Michel Tombroff, Softkinetic

• Neil Young, ngmoco

• Gabe Zichermann, rmbrME

GamesBeat also features an innovative opportunity for startups in digital media and interactive entertainment to present their companies to the GamesBeat 2009 with the “Who's Got Game Competition.“ Select entrepreneurs will be given the opportunity to pitch their company or new product to a conference center full of game and media industry executives, investors, journalists and fellow entrepreneurs. Submissions ended on March 6th and VentureBeat's Dean Takahashi and a handful of expert judges will select seven companies from the pool to present at GamesBeat 2009 in the next few days.

Each selected company will have five minutes during GamesBeat 2009 to tell the gaming industry why it should pay attention. Attendees will then vote to select a winner, who will receive a cleverly-designed award and a spotlight on VentureBeat.

About VentureBeat

VentureBeat’s mission is to provide news and information about private companies and the venture capital that fuels them. Founder Matt Marshall covered venture capital for the San Jose Mercury News until he left in Sept. 2006 to launch VentureBeat as an independent company. VentureBeat is initially focusing on Silicon Valley, and gradually expanding its coverage of innovation hubs around the globe. Its mission in each region is the same: to provide insider news and data about the entrepreneurial and venture community that is useful to decision makers.

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CONTACT

Sean Kauppinen

International Digital Entertainment Agency

(415) 299-2156

sean@ide-agency.com