insomnia40

Thursday September 30th 2010: Multiplay, organiser of the i-Series, the country's leading multiplayer games festival, has revealed the statistics from its most recent event, which show that competitive multiplayer gaming is in rude health.

With a massive 4,400 gamers in attendance across the three-day event -  competing for a total prize pot of over £26,500 - insomnia40 was one of the most intense multiplayer experiences the country has ever seen.

The attendance is close to twice that of insomnia39, which saw 2,350 competitors across the weekend.

With Counter-Strike, Call of Duty 4 and FIFA 10 competitions running alongside World Cyber Games qualifiers, spectator interest was huge - with 95,668 viewers watching the live streams across the weekend. This compares with 16,000 online viewers for insomnia39; a phenomenal rise.

In total, 1.3million unique users visited the Multiplay site during the month of insomnia40.

Exhibitors at insomnia40 included Samsung, Samsung Mobile, Demon, Relentless, Thermaltake, Microsoft, ESET, Iiyama, QuietPC, Kusto PC, Antec, Madcatz, Aqua Tuning, CCL, Logitech, Team Dignitas, Dino PC and Cooler Master - with many offering additional competitions and entertainment for the packed event crowd.

insomnia41 will take place between 11th and 15th November at the Newbury  Race Course. Dubbed the "sleepless November LAN" - thanks, in part, to the Guinness World Record longest FPS gaming marathon attempt - insomnia41 already has a prize pot of up to £25k confirmed - plus every attendee who books at the discounted Early Bird rate (through until October 4th) receives a free copy of the brilliant indie game Dogfighter.

"It was a phenomenally exciting weekend, fiercely contested and intensely thrilling," says Craig Fletcher, managing director, Multiplay, organiser of the i-Series events. "They say life begins at 40, so insomnia41 will be bigger and better than ever. We've already confirmed some incredible tournaments and activities which will see the i-Series cement its position as the best multiplayer events in the country."

Information and early bird booking for insomnia41 is available on the Multiplay site: http://iseries.multiplay.co.uk/

Anyone who missed the action live from insomnia40 can catch up with videos and commentary on the firm's Fileplay site: http://www.fileplay.net/channels/i-series

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For more information, please contact Simon Byron, Ali Wood or Lauren Dillon at Premier PR ( firstname.surname@premierpr.com / 44 207 292 8330)

About Multiplay

Multiplay is a leading service provider to the games industry through events, server hosting, content delivery and consultancy. Multiplay online community is one of the largest in Europe. Multiplay gaming events annually attract over 15,000 gamers. These events are an ideal opportunity for publishers, developers, retailers and hardware manufacturers to showcase their latest products. Its events also play host to the finals of their online tournaments and the UK finals of the World Cyber Games. Multiplay is one of the world's largest hosts of online game servers, with multiple locations across the globe, providing specialist commercial hosting for PC and Consoles, including game servers and high availability websites. Multiplay has a proven track record with extensive hosting agreements with many publishers and developers.