“As a constantly growing company with multiple studio locations and external partners we needed a flexible Project Management tool that supports our approach of agile development. At Crytek each Project Team lives agile development in a different way. With Hansoft we found the right tool to support different team structures with individual configuration and setup, fitting their needs perfectly. In comparison to other solutions, Hansoft reduces the overhead for each team member and gives us more time and freedom to do what we do best – raise the bar in quality and innovation,” said Sebastian Nell, Producer, Crytek.

Hansoft is an integrated project management and defect tracking solution, designed to simplify the complexity of game development by combining a radically more intuitive and fast interface with advanced features that are easy customizable to the specific needs of each development project.

“We have always focused on the needs of complex projects with sometimes distributed development and we are really happy to be working with such a fast growing and exciting company as Crytek. With the newly released Hansoft 6.0 we have taken things even further by simplifying everyday work to make development and QA more efficient, helping studios ship better games faster and reduce project risks,” said Patric Palm, Hansoft CEO.

About Crytek

Crytek GmbH ("Crytek") is one of the world’s leading independent development studios for interactive entertainment with its headquarters in Frankfurt am Main (Germany) and additional studios in Kiev (Ukraine), Budapest (Hungary), Sofia (Bulgaria), Seoul (South Korea) and Nottingham (UK).

Crytek is dedicated to creating exceptionally high quality video games for the PC and next-generation consoles, powered by their proprietary cutting edge 3D-Game-Technology CryENGINE®.

Since its foundation in 1999 Crytek created the multi-award winning PC titles Far Cry®, Crysis®, awarded best PC Game of E3 2007 and Best Technology at the 2008 Game Developers Choice Awards and Crysis Warhead®, awarded Best Graphics Technology at IGN Best of 2008 Awards. www.crytek.com

This new version of Hansoft contains a number of important improvements to simplify development complexity for the team, for QA and for the enterprise.

“Usability of tools like Hansoft really matters to the bottom line since it does not only make individuals more productive, but also makes the whole organization more efficient. In Hansoft 6.0 we have focused on improvements that further simplify development workxfor the team, for QA and for the enterprise,” said Hans Andersson, Chief Development Officer, Hansoft.

Hansoft is an integrated solution for agile and lean development, collaborative Gantt scheduling, real-time reporting, bug tracking / QA, workload coordination, and portfolio & document management. The tool is fast and easy and builds on principles of team empowerment, increased communication, transparency, and collaboration. Today, demanding teams in Asia, Australia, Europe and North America, are using Hansoft to become more efficient.

Hans continued: “In Hansoft 6.0 we have, for example, made the management of large backlogs and program management really powerful but still easy to use. Another example is the new active directory integration, using our SDK module, for team members to login to Hansoft via Windows. No more worries about forgotten passwords.”

New features in Hansoft 6.0:

Simplifying complexity for the Enterprise

- New prioritizing functionality merges the benefits of prioritizing categories with numbering, among other things. This new functionality makes prioritizing easier in large scale product backlogs that are, in effect, a backlog of backlogs. Program management becomes easier. Also, the everyday reprioritization in the sprint backlog is made more intuitive.

- Hide completed items in the product backlog makes the backlog more manageable.

- See Item status on task scheduling items (Not done or Completed) in the product backlog so it is easier to grasp overall state of the project or program, when using both Gantt scheduling and agile backlog items in the same backlog.

- Multi select users and add to resource groups and projects making enterprise user management easier.

- Enterprise license management enables user accounts to be shared across geographical locations, servers and databases.

- Many performance enhancements.

Simplifying complexity for the team

- Login to Hansoft via Windows (integration with Active Directory).

- History and task assignments can be saved for deleted users.

- Delegation and limited visibility to resource groups.

- Box selection in the time line view allows you to move multiple task scheduling items in the timeline view at once instead of one by one.

- Access items not fitting on a toolbar through a quick drop down. This has been a big issue when working on lap tops or smaller screens.

- Right aligned item descriptions, when they cannot fit into the column, makes them more readable, when for example having long user story descriptions or sub project paths.

- Undo or redo is not reset when someone else is editing in the project schedule or product backlog.

- Improved look and feel.

Simplifying complexity for QA

- Open items, tasks or bugs in a floating activity details window. Improves usability and workflows around Quality Assurance and working with multiple bugs or tasks at once.

- Redesign of how multiple comments windows works, making it more accessible and easier to find. Workflow status changes are now shown in the same window as comments, which improve the Quality Assurance process.

- The workflow now requires a new comment (since last workflow status change) instead of an existing comment. Vastly improves how the comment system adds to the bug and project workflows.

- Scrollbar for item settings in the activity details window improves usability and batch editing possibilities.

- Manage the link to task/item/bug column in an easier way through a drop down and seeing the bug or workflow status before each link.

Hansoft makes the difference! “Developing aerospace technology is a complex process, and a powerful, yet flexible project management system is key in keeping the projects on track and deliver top quality products on time. Our team was excited about Hansoft from the very first day and we are still impressed by the comprehensive set of features,” said Dr. Klaus Michel, Director AOCS sensors at Jenoptik Defense & Civil Systems division.

Hansoft is a project management tool for complex software development, used in more than 20 countries around the world. The tool is fast and easy to use and integrates both agile and scheduling projects in one, real time updated view.

“Hansoft is a flexible tool, easy to adapt and customize to the needs of a specific project. This makes it especially useful in complex highly advanced projects, like aerospace-technology development. Jenoptik Defense & Civil Systems division is at the forefront of advanced optical systems and we are really excited to have them onboard as a customer,” said Patric Palm, Hansoft CEO.

About Jenoptik

Jenoptik’s Defense & Civil Systems division combines opto-electronics with precision mechanics to create complex components, systems and facilities. Within aerospace industry Jenoptik offers opto-electronic instruments, multi-spectral camera systems for earth observation, sensors for satellite guidance, navigation and control (AOCS sensors) as well as software.

Following the rapid expansion, Hansoft has moved into brand new, spacious premises in central Uppsala, Sweden.

“We have been looking at new office spaces for over a year now, and I’m really pleased that we finally found the perfect location. The closeness to the main airport Arlanda makes it easier to serve our global user base and the interior design has been carefully chosen to make an inspiring and efficient environment for our employees,” said Hansoft CEO, Patric Palm.

Hansoft has also recently unveiled a new website: www.hansoft.se.

Apart from the visual facelift and updated features, the ambition is to create a platform where functions can be added on continuously.

During the year, Hansoft has steadily been growing its staff to meet the increasing demand.

The latest three employees to join the company are Jonas Persson, Per Juhlén and Alan Weekes.

Jonas Persson is filling the position as Senior Software Engineer at Hansoft. Jonas has over 10 years professional experience in software development, and his latest employment was with Imentum, Sweden.

Per Juhlén has joined the company as Customer Services Director. Per has 7 years of project management experience of which 4,5 years has been within game development in various production roles.

Alan Weekes has been hired as Solution and Sales Manager. Alan has worked more than 6 years in IT sales globally, and his most recent employment was with Tronix Systems, Ireland.

Most of the support questions are today handled by Hansoft’s support managers, trained in the tool, industry specifics as well as project management, and they are all certified ScrumMasters. The Hansoft productivity consulting services are a compliment to cover the need for sharing more advanced best practices.

Hansoft Certified Trainer Program

One step in satisfying the demand for Hansoft training and productivity consulting is the launch of the Hansoft Certified Trainer program. The program is open to independent consultants with a deep experience and understanding of the production of games. They are carefully selected for their pragmatic approach to productivity improvement and focus on team empowerment best practices.

“Hansoft is a very intuitive tool and most of our clients just go ahead and start using it. Sometimes we do onsite productivity consulting, to share production best practices and help studios scaling agile and lean methodologies to the size and specifics of games development. To meet the growing interest for these more advanced consulting services, we are now increasing our capacity, and since we want to stay a tools vendor and not become a consulting company, we started the Hansoft Certified Trainer program. This program enables consultants in the industry to help our clients to be more productive in their use of Hansoft. I’m very proud to announce the first three certified trainers: Gordon Moyes, Heather Maxwell Chandler and Jim Whitelaw,” said Hansoft CEO Patric Palm.

Gordon Moyes has a wide range of experience in the game industry. From programming graphics and AI for the ground breaking real time strategy game Dark Reign: The Future of War (1997), he was more recently the Senior Producer for the original Destroy All Humans! and its sequel for Pandemic Studios Australia. In between, Gordon spent several years at Activision Santa Monica on titles such as Star Trek: Armada. Specializing in Hansoft training and plug in customization, he primarily offers his services in Australia and Asia. Gordon holds a Bachelor of IT and an MBA.

Heather Maxwell Chandler has been working in the game industry since 1996 and has production experience at Ubisoft, Electronic Arts, Activision, on over 35 titles across multiple platforms. Her experience as an internal and external producer gives her a deep knowledge of best production practices. She is the author of The Game Production Handbook, and numerous other articles on game development. She is a Certified ScrumMaster and is committed to training teams how to get the most of their people, tools, and methods. Specializing in Hansoft training, improving production pipelines, and team building, she offers services in the U.S. and Europe.

Jim Whitelaw has been leading software development initiatives for more than fifteen years and has been using agile techniques for more than ten. He has been in senior positions at companies like Intuit and BioWare with experience in web development, desktop shrinkwrap software and video game development. Jim founded denovoPRO Consulting to focus on helping software development teams to transition to agile development and to grow their agile expertise. Jim has a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Waterloo, is a PMP as well as a certified ScrumMaster. Jim is an active member in the agile community, a proponent of scrum and an enthusiastic leader, teacher and coach. Based in Canada, Jim provides service to clients in North America and Europe.

Several universities and game development schools have signed up for educational licenses and Hansoft is now being used in a number of student projects around the world. One of them is the Scottish Centre for Excellence in Computer Games Education, at University of Abertay Dundee.

“We expect our students to work on computer games development projects in a professional studio environment, and in a professional manner. Hansoft enables the students to work together across courses and disciplines with improved communications, project management and reporting practices. With Hansoft’s educational license, we get the opportunity to use a professional tool at undergraduate level, something that makes our students better equipped to create high quality media and develop professional practices that will get them that dream job after graduation”, said Gregor White, Director of Academic Enterprise, University of Abertay Dundee.

The idea behind the educational license is to fill the need for universities to be in tune with the latest tools in the industry, for studios to be able to recruit graduates already proficient in using Hansoft and for students to increase their chances on the highly competitive job market.

“This initiative actually came directly from the industry. Several of our clients independently approached us about the idea of an educational license to make student more ready for the everyday work at their studios. The response from lecturers and students has been overwhelming and we are really glad to be able to support the talent of the future with Hansoft”, said Hansoft CEO Patric Palm.

Another example is Image Campus in Argentina.

“At Image Campus, we have identified that one of the major problems within many Digital Media Development Studios, and particularly Games Development Studios, is the lack of use of good project management methodologies and tools. In the process we tried many project management tools, from off-the-shelf products to open source solutions, until we found and chose to use Hansoft. One of the greatest advantages of Hansoft is the ability to integrate agile development methodologies with collaborative scheduling in one view. This speeds up production cycles and puts data in the hands of Project Managers with real time reporting. Also, by having an integrated tool deployed across the studio, artists, developers and project managers all know exactly where they are in the production cycle and what is left to tackle in each hierarchical level. We consider project management skills key factors of success and we truly believe that teaching them is an obligation for serious schools who care about the quality of their graduates and about their future in a competitive industry. Hansofts educational license allows us to do so and we expect that Hansoft will keep addressing studios needs and to provide top quality software in the future”, says Aníbal Menezes, Institutional Relations Manager, Image Campus.

"Hansoft's integration offers an intelligent agile solution that supports the workflow Perforce users are accustomed to," said John Walker, manager of Perforce's Partner and Integration Program. "This integration once again demonstrates that Perforce's flexible architecture can support best of breed technologies like Hansoft".

The integration is certified by Perforce and provides full real-time synchronization of data between Hansoft and Perforce. Not only is the integration ready-made, but also very fast and easy to setup for the user. One important feature is the ability to configure the integration uniquely per project in Hansoft. In this way, different projects can have different sets of data synchronized.

“With the outstanding performance and functionality of Hansoft and Perforce tightly integrated, teams will now benefit from a scalable and easy solution leveraging productivity to new levels in agile and lean software development,” said Hansoft CEO Patric Palm.

About Perforce

Perforce, the Fast Software Configuration Management System, is an award-winning tool that versions and manages source code and digital assets for enterprises large and small. Perforce is easy to install, learn and administer; seamlessly handles distributed development; and supports developers across a large number of platforms. Perforce ensures development integrity by grouping multi-file updates into atomic changes, enables concurrent development, and intelligently manages multiple software releases using its Inter-File Branching™ system.

"At 2K Games, quality is paramount in all of our games. Modern game development is about iteration, agility, tuning and balancing. We have found Hansoft to be an impressive tool to help us do just that. It provides scheduling models we rely on, and streamlines communication, reporting and efficiency for our publishing group," said John Chowanec, Development Director at 2K Games.

Hansoft is an integrated project management solution that builds on principles of team empowerment, increased communication, transparency and collaboration. The tool is used by developers in over 20 countries around the world, for agile and lean development, collaborative scheduling, bug tracking and workload coordination.

John Chowanec continued: "The fact that Hansoft is developed by a team that understands the challenges of game development is a huge bonus. Their speed of response on support issues is refreshing and their customer service is absolutely fantastic."

"Fast and open communication is one of the key principles behind the Hansoft tool but also fundamental in our interaction with the rapidly growing community of Hansoft users. Continuous feedback and discussions with clients around the world like 2K Games helps us to calibrate existing features and create new, powerful tools. It's exciting to see that Hansoft is now being used by 2K Games and we look forward to our continued relationship," said Hansoft CEO, Patric Palm.

"As a rapidly growing studio we needed a server based project management solution that could support internally and externally driven projects and was easy to adapt to our iterative development process - Hansoft delivered. In the short time we have had Hansoft deployed, it has already increased productivity, communication and visibility across our entire team. The new pipeline and workflow tool has allowed Harmonix to automate many of our repetitive and time consuming production tasks into a streamlined process that the development team has direct interaction with," said Michael Verrette, Director of Production, Harmonix Music Systems.

Haraldur D Thorvaldsson has been hired as a Senior Software Engineer at Hansoft. A recent PhD graduate in Computer Science from Washington University in St. Louis, Haraldur previously worked in Iceland as a developer at OZ.COM and later served as CTO for SmartVR, designing software for multi-user virtual 3D worlds.

"Hansoft is a great asset to Curve Studios, helping us keep our commitment of constantly delivering high quality titles. We've found it a powerful tool that facilitates both Agile and Waterfall methodologies, and use it across multiple projects. Hansoft's ease of use allows for rapid planning, and really helps to empower the team by giving them a constantly updated list of what their tasks are on different levels of granularity, as well as keeping them in touch with the projects' bigger picture," said Graeme Puttock - Head of Production at Curve Studios.

Hansoft is a project management tool used by developers in more than 20 countries around the globe. The ability to handle both Agile and scheduling projects keeps all teams on track and the project managers can easily follow the progress. Hansoft also takes resource management to a new dimension, making it easier to keep costs down, hit deadlines and ship better games faster.

"Over allocation used to be a typical problem when working over multiple projects. The difficulties to coordinate teams and maximise resources we saw among our customers, inspired us to develop a powerful resource management tool in Hansoft. I get constantly surprised over the amount of time and money that can be saved, simply by using existing resources in a more efficient way. Curve is an excitng studio and I'm really curious to see what they'll come up with in the future," said Hansoft CEO Patric Palm.

About Curve Studios

Curve Studios is an independent video games developer based in Angel, central London. The studio was formed by experienced industry veterans in 2005 with the aim of establishing itself as a major development force and preferred development partner. Having completed multiple projects across leading handheld and home consoles, Curve continues its mission to guarantee the highest quality products, delivered on time and to budget. www.curve-studios.com

Hansoft 5.3 contains a number of improvements. One of the most significant is the asset pipeline tool, a feature many developers have been waiting for.

"We have had in-depth discussions with studios for quite some time on how to take the heavy manual work out of managing asset pipelines. Many teams are also experiencing that it's hard to combine an agile process like scrum with the linear nature of asset creation. This became a large and very exiting research project on our side and we are now releasing Hansoft 5.3 where art pipelines can be created in parallel with sign-off workflows to make asset creation more lean," said Hans Andersson, Development Director at Hansoft.

Developers in over 20 countries are using Hansoft for collaborative scheduling, agile, bug tracking and workload coordination. Hansoft is also used on multi site projects, to keep close contacts and daily discussions between teams, even though the geographical distance may be large.

"Every day we get large amounts of great feedback from clients that we use to continuously make improvements of Hansoft. Some updates are small but significant for the everyday user experience and some are large, like the new report generator. That was originally based on feedback from QA managers that wanted the reporting in the bug database part of Hansoft to be more powerful," Said Hans Andersson.

New features in Hansoft 5.3:

• Asset pipeline tool that can manage complex, parallel, and nested flows of art creation in both agile and scheduling projects.
• Workflows tool to edit and apply a workflow on any kind of item in Hansoft. Use it for art sign off, quality iterations or user story testing.
• New report generator. Create and share reports with co-workers using Hansoft's visual query builder, new query language and grouping functionality.
• Updated integration SDK. Access and use pipelines, workflows and reports in a simple manner in the SDK. This enables advanced integration with asset management systems as well as making it easier to integrate Hansoft with external report systems such as executive dashboards and business intelligence tools
• Many improvements on the agile and QA feature sets in Hansoft to make everyday usage of Hansoft even smoother.
• Performance enhancements. Less time to synchronize when you connect to the Hansoft server. Handling a large number of documents over global distances is faster.

"The way Hansoft enables instant and clear communication to the teams has made it easier to manage resources and avoid over allocation or planning conflicts. It helps us getting the job done and deliver on time," said YAGER Managing Director Timo Ullmann.

Hansoft combines a user friendly interface design with the capabilities of instant and visual communication. The project manager has the resource usage of individual team members updated in real time, which makes it easy for managers to get an overview of the project and follow the progress.

Hansoft CEO Patric Palm comments: "Productivity is important for leading studios like YAGER Development, and resource management is an important corner stone. Hansoft gives the project manager an updated overview of all work allocated to individual resources, resource groups and projects. The managers get a live pulse on the project to better manage towards critical milestones and ship on time."

About YAGER Development
YAGER Development is an independent videogame developer based in Berlin, Germany.
Founded in 1999, the studio is dedicated to creating AAA action-loaded games with a rich player experience, competitive technology and high-quality presentation. www.yager-development.com

"What doesn't bend, breaks. Hansoft is ideal for game industry development because it provides flexibility for shifting priorities and goals through highly intuitive and usable interface design. The ability to easily manage resources for projects, customize the production style and views per project and user, and quickly see resource conflicts, workloads and costs continues to impress me daily. Overall, Hansoft's integration of the scheduling, reporting and bug tracking systems, with large scale multi-user role based architecture, makes it an excellent single tool solution for the full production pipeline," said Mike Hines, Project Director at Epic Games China.

Hansoft is a fully integrated production management tool, used by a rapidly increasing number of studios in more than 20 countries for project management, bug tracking and workload coordination. Hansoft makes it possible to run scheduling and agile projects in one single tool. It empowers teams to ship better games faster and provides management with a project status overview updated in real time.

"Improved collaboration and flexibility are fundamental principles behind Hansoft. Using a tool that truly empowers teams is key when focusing on productivity to get the most out of their talent. I'm really happy to work with Epic Games China and see Hansoft put into action in their exciting projects," said Hansoft CEO Patric Palm.

About Epic Games China
Epic Games China based in Shanghai, China licenses Epic Games' Unreal Engine 2 and Unreal Engine 3 in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and South East Asia. The company provides local technology support and professional training services in Mandarin and English. Epic Games China also offers AAA quality content production outsourcing and game development services to developers and publishers worldwide. www.epicgameschina.com

Anders Wass has been hired as a Software Integration Engineer at Hansoft. His most recent employment was with Init, Stockholm.

John Broome has started as a Solution and Sales Manager at Hansoft. His most recent employment was with E*TRADE Australia.

Parul Sharma has been recruited as a Solution and Sales Manager at Hansoft. Her most recent employment was at Philips Electronics India.

Erik Ellingsen is filling the new position of IT Operations Manager at Hansoft. His most recent employment was with Connecta consulting, Stockholm.

Julia Hallin has started as a Marketing and PR-Manager at Hansoft. Her most recent employment was with VisitSweden, New York.

"As a studio we have examined a number of solutions for how we build dynamic production teams and central to this has been the choice of tools we use to empower our teams to meet their goals. Hansoft has therefore become our tool of choice for managing key development tasks and is providing us both internally and externally with additional visibility and a framework for making more informed decisions. In our continual effort for excellence and quality the right tools enable us to deliver on those goals and Hansoft with its unique mix of scheduling methods and "live" nature certainly helps us do that," said Jonas Eneroth, Development Director at IO Interactive.

Hansoft is a fast and intuitive production management tool, used by developers in 20 countries around the globe. The software gives every team member a prioritised to-do list, updated in real time, and enables managers to use more efficient production practices to better face the challenges of today's game development.

"Hansoft matters on the bottom line not only because of its powerful features, but also because of its ease of use. This is absolutely crucial to satisfy the critical demands of high profile studios like IO Interactive. We are thrilled to work with IO Interactive and positive that Hansoft will help the studio to reduce project time, cost and risk," said Hansoft CEO Patric Palm.

About IO Interactive
Established in 1998, IO Interactive built the hugely successful "Hitman" series from the ground up. Bought by "Tomb Raider" publisher Eidos in 2004, IO continues to develop cutting edge original properties with titles such as "Freedom Fighters" and "Kane & Lynch: Dead Men" under their belt.
IO Interactive has more than 200 people across its four teams that come from over 23 different countries. The studio is based in Copenhagen, Denmark. www.ioi.dk

“Blue Fang has tried many project management tools over the past ten years, ranging from industry standards to homegrown systems. Each had their strengths and weaknesses but only Hansoft has brought it all together in a single package that is useful for both our developers and producers. The ability to work with agile and traditional methods makes Hansoft the most attractive option for the way we develop games,” said Blue Fang producer Fred Galpern.

Hansoft is used by development teams in 20 countries for collaborative scheduling, task tracking, instant communication, Agile, QA / bug tracking, resource usage, portfolio and document management.

“Blue Fang is well known for its high quality games and we are excited to provide them with a tool that will help them increase studio productivity and maintain the inspirational environment that makes the team so successful. Teams using Hansoft don’t have to choose between agile and scheduling project management styles. Hansoft enables these different styles to be run side by side, within the same development project,” said Hansoft CEO Patric Palm.

About Blue Fang Games

Blue Fang Games is an independent game developer dedicated to creating compelling, emotionally engaging games focused on the animal kingdom that set the benchmark for broad-based family entertainment. Blue Fang's Zoo TycoonTM franchise has sold over seven million units worldwide and the studio is now developing a new multiplatform videogame property with THQ, Inc. Founded in 1998, Blue Fang Games is located in Waltham, MA. For more information visit Blue Fang Games on the web at www.bluefang.com.

"We first introduced Hansoft in a project that was near the end of pre-production. We were very impressed by the ease with which we could adapt Hansoft to support our existing production processes and the real-time visibility it gives both management and staff on project status. We are looking forward to using it on more projects and value the new functionality brought by frequent updates. This we think will allow us to plan, scope, manage and execute projects much more effectively," said Peter Schoeler, Technical Director at A2M.

Hansoft, an integrated solution for project management, bug tracking, workload coordination, and document management, is today used by developers in 20 countries. The company is now working on version 5.3, due for the release in December 2008.

"Hansoft 5.3 will feature revolutionary new tools for creating art task pipelines and automated workflows for quality sign-offs. I am looking forward to see how leading studios such as A2M will use this to make the process of asset creation more lean," said Hansoft CEO Patric Palm.

About A2M

Based in Montreal, Quebec, A2M is dedicated to creating great games and original concepts that capture the player's imagination. Since 1992, A2M has developed over 40 titles across every genre, on every viable platforms. The studio has also partnered with the industry's top publishers and licensors, including Activision Blizzard, Disney, Electronic Arts, LucasArt, Sony and Warner Bros. A2M is Canada's largest independent game developer, employing over 450 talented people, and is committed to producing unparalleled game experiences with original or licensed Intellectual Properties, in a creative environment where talent thrives. Over the past three years, A2M has ranked amongst the Deloitte Technology Fast 50^TM and also as Canada's 50 Best Managed Companies^TM, two years in a row. www.a2m.com.

"Hansoft integrated with our existing development processes seamlessly and has delivered solid productivity gains across the whole team. It provides every member of the team with a complete view of the project and a single place to go for all their allocated work. This has enabled improved communication of critical project information throughout the studio and gives us a much greater ability to effectively manage our projects," said Matthew Hart, Head of Production at Ninja Theory.

Hansoft is an integrated solution for project management, bug tracking, workload coordination, and document management, used by game development teams in 20 countries. The tool builds on principles of team empowerment, increased communication, transparency, and collaboration, and is also popular for cooperating with outsourcing partners, publishers and external QA teams.

"We are now seeing a larger focus on productivity in games development and there is an increasing demand for methods and tools like Hansoft to make teams more efficient. We are excited to work with Ninja Theory and I feel confident that Hansoft will help them getting the most out of their talent," said Hansoft CEO Patric Palm.

About Ninja Theory Ltd.
Ninja Theory, formerly known as Just Add Monsters Ltd, is a videogame developer based in Cambridge, UK and creators of the visually stunning PS3 title Heavenly Sword. The studio also produced Kung Fu Chaos, an Xbox exclusive game published in 2003 by Microsoft Games Studios. Ninja Theory believes that the next-generation of games consoles offer an opportunity to elevate the games experience into one that can rival film and literature and was one of the first development studios to commit exclusively to next-generation consoles.

Hansoft is a used by a rapidly increasing number of development teams in Australia, Asia, Europe and North America for collaborative scheduling, task tracking, instant communication, Agile, QA / bug tracking, resource usage, portfolio and document management.

"Hansoft have market leading performance through our unique technology and we have designed the tool on principles of team empowerment, increased communication, transparency, and collaboration. Black Lantern Studios are committed to its team, processes and technology and using Hansoft will further help them bring great games to the market in short time," says Patric Palm, CEO at Hansoft.

Philip Cohen, Senior Producer at Black Lantern Studios, Inc., commented: "When I first heard I would be using Hansoft to track my projects, I was very resistant to the thought of giving up my previous tracking methods to learn an entirely new program. After just a single day of using it, I'm not sure how I ever tracked projects effectively without it.

The interface is so easy to use that I never felt stumped. Within a single day, I had multiple short and long term projects implemented with complete tasks tracking per employee, including automatic report generation and milestone tracking based on task completion. By mid-day, I was able to evaluate the balance of all my projects and employee resources across my entire business, and was using the powerful communication features to write notes, attach documents, and share images on a per-task basis; all of this without reading a single instruction or watching any of the tutorial videos Hansoft makes available via their website.

Hansoft's ease of use and common sense approach to interface and project scaling makes it an invaluable tool for any game developer or publisher, regardless of the number or size of projects being tracked. The pricing is so reasonable that it pays for itself in the amount of time saved through the solid tracking and communication it provides to each team member."

"We were pleasantly surprised how easy it was to set it up and get the entire team to use it and really buy into it. Games are big business now, competing with budgets of films. Team sizes are rising dramatically and it's important to manage these teams as efficiently and effectively as possible and Hansoft has the perfect answer in their project management software," says Andrew Oliver, Chief Technology Officer at Blitz Games Studios .

Hansoft features an integrated solution for project management, bug tracking and coordinating team workload. It is also a popular tool for collaboration with outsourcing partners, publishers and QA teams.

"Blitz Games Studios is today one of the largest independent studios in the world and we are very happy to provide their team with our fast and easy tool. Attention to constantly increased productivity is key to making good business in large scale games development. Using Hansoft will help Blitz even further leverage productivity, says Patric Palm, CEO at Hansoft.

About Blitz Games
Award-winning Blitz Games Studios is based in Leamington Spa and was founded in 1990 by twin brothers Andrew and Philip Oliver. The company is now one of the largest independent developers in the world, boasting five distinctly different divisions. The Olivers are responsible for developing over 100 games since the early 1980s and their company is currently working on top secret mature titles, multiple casual games and ground-breaking serious games in addition to the high profile family games for which the company has historically been well-known. In addition, the company recently released one of the most successful branded games promotions of all time with the three games developed for Burger King selling over 3.2 million copies across the US. The company continues its huge long-term investment into Blitz Tech, its in-house technology, which provides one of the best game development environments of any independent developer for PlayStation®2, PlayStation®3, PlayStation® Portable, PSN, Nintendo Wii®, Nintendo DS, WiiWare Xbox 360 and XBLA. Blitz Games Studios enjoys an award-winning working environment, with staff enjoying a wide range of benefits. www.BlitzGamesStudios.com

Struan Robertson, Producer at Gusto Games commented "Moving to Hansoft from our previous project management system has been a quiet revolution. Rather than using separate programs for waterfall and agile development, it's allowed us to bring all of our production methodologies under one roof with minimum disruption and learning; if you know about agile development, then you already know how to use Hansoft because it does everything you'd expect and more."

Patric Palm, CEO of Hansoft also added, "Gusto Games is a successful and fast growing studio that just branched into several sites. Using Hansoft will support them in sustaining this exciting growth and leverage their team productivity even further," says Patric Palm, CEO, Hansoft"

Simon Phillips, Managing Director of the Gusto Games Group explained, "As we grow our business organically across both of our studios in Bloxham and Derby, we want to make sure that we install the correct tools and procedures to ensure that our growing process is a painless one. We have numerous projects in place, we are pro-actively recruiting and as a result, we want to appeal to the industry's best within the development field."

About Gusto Games
Since Gusto Games was formed in 2003; the company has gone from strength to strength by building on its original goals to deliver quality gaming titles on time, within budget and across all leading gaming platforms. Gusto Games originally brought Eidos' hugely successful Championship Manager franchise to the console and PSP platforms with all console versions selling through at retail in impressive numbers

More recently with the opening of their Derby Studio in mid 2007, Gusto has continued to expand and is always looking to add to its current head count. Gusto is uniquely positioned within the industry to offer opportunities to new staff in two separate development disciplines. The recently opened Derby studio is focused on developing products for the action and adventure genres, whilst the Bloxham based studio has a pedigree and proven track record in developing games in the sporting genre.

Gusto Games has become one of Europe's most respected development studios and this fact was underscored in 2005 when, amongst others, the studio was nominated for the "Best New European Studio of the Year" at the Develop's Industry Excellence Awards. Building on that success Gusto also featured within Intent Media's ‘Develop 100' in 2007.

For further information contact Dene Landucci on 07967-177779 or d.landucci@btinternet.com or visit www.gustogames.com

Hansoft 5.1 comes with many improvements across the whole solution. Teams using a task scheduling approach and/or an Agile workflow will benefit from the new release. The most significant updates are however found in the Agile and QA functionality.

“With Hansoft 5.1 Agile teams can choose to view the product backlog in three different ways depending on situation and preference. The new wall view is pretty stunning but not for the ones easily prone to motion sickness. We have also improved the fast and easy QA functionality to satisfy the needs of larger studios and publishers. They will now find more advanced bug workflow settings and detailed access and restriction rules,” says Patric Palm, CEO, Hansoft.

The multi view product backlog allows Agile teams to work with the backlog in three different ways:

- Items in a hierarchy. Create and structure items in a hierarchy. By delegating parts of the backlog team members and externals can participate as well.

- Items on a wall. Analyse, create and work with items in alternative ways by arranging them on a virtual wall.

- Items sorted/prioritised. Prioritise and sort items in this view before moving them from the backlog to a sprint/iteration.

In addition to the bug workflow improvements Hansoft 5.1 also features detailed access and restriction rules. This gives or restricts resources/groups to edit data in columns/fields, deleting bugs, customising workflow, documents and many other parts.

The Hansoft integration SDK can access all data and functionality on the Hansoft server to do real time integrations within the studio tool chain, or with other systems such as an external bug database. With the latest release the integration SDK not only features a C layer but also a .NET layer. A C++ layer is soon to be released.

"With our SDK it is easy to integrate Hansoft for project management and bug tracking with other leading tools to create a tightly woven best-of-bread solution for application lifecycle management," says Patric Palm, Managing Director, Hansoft.

Melbourne based IR Gurus is one of Australia's leading multi-platform game development studios and a long time Hansoft user.

Cameron Dunn, Technical Director at IR Gurus commented, "The Hansoft integration SDK is an important part of our workflow design. The SDK is an absolute joy to work with. I wish all companies had such nice interfaces to their products."

About IR Gurus
For over 10 years, Melbourne based IR Gurus, has been creating award-winning, top-selling games. From the globally successful equestrian titles to the acclaimed AFL series, with every product IR Gurus further demonstrates the company's commitment to delivering a high-quality game experience to their consumers.
IR Gurus is a globally recognised developer. The success the recently released Heatseeker, AFL Premiership 2006, the record-breaking Gaelic Games: Football, the multi-award winning World War II combat flight game Heroes of the Pacific, have all cemented the company's position as a significant, international, multi-genre game development studio.
Today IR Gurus continues to break new ground. Already developing a number of next-generation titles, on PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Wii, the company is exploiting the hardware capabilities of each unit to guarantee a rich gaming experience on all of its products.
With quality a core part of the company's value system, IR Gurus, more than ever, is committed to producing superior and enjoyable game experiences. www.irgurus.com

”Power Challenge is a rapidly growing game development company with high demands on finding a flexible and swift project model and thereby an equally flexible project tracking tool that supports the model in full. Agile practises were adopted early on in the growth phase and Hansoft was quickly proven the best system on the market. It supports our geographically separated development organization and it brings teams and individuals easy-to-use and powerful functions for managing the game development in real-time, across offices, in every level of the production; from developer and tester to producer and product owner. The system roll-out was extremely quick and the user interface is intuitive. Our teams were up and running using Hansoft in a matter of hours. We’re happy to have found a tool that supports Agile development in such a great way," says Richard Kronfält, Executive Producer at Power Challenge.

Power Challenge was founded in 2004 by Johan Christenson, an Internet entrepreneur who previously created three successful companies in the gaming industry. The company, which is headquartered in Karlskrona, Sweden, merged with ManagerZone in 2007 in order to strengthen its position in the rapidly growing online gaming market. The Power Challenge team is determined to push the boundaries of the sports gaming world by combining the quality of a PC- based game with the high-growth patterns of online social networking communities. In 2007 Benchmark Capital, a leading early-stage high-technology venture capital firm, announced an $8 million investment in Power Challenge. The investment will be used to fund development of new titles, enhance the quality of existing games and expand the company's global infrastructure.

Patric Palm, Managing Director at Hansoft commented, “PowerChallenge is a world leader in online gaming and we are obviously thrilled to provide them with Hansoft for their exciting projects. Using Hansoft will help them coordinate all their talent across several studios. We are very much looking forward to see the results in the new titles coming out.”

About PowerChallenge

Power Challenge is the leading sports games provider on the Web. With two games currently available and more on the way, Power Challenge is adding thousands of users to a growing community of sports and games enthusiasts. Power Challenge provides both action and management games where users play against their friends or fellow users, creating dedicated communities of fans playing together across the virtual world. Power Challenge has two development studios in Karlskrona and Linkoping, and will shortly be opening offices in Stockholm and New York.

www.powerchallenge.com

“Hansoft’s fast and easy, state-of-the-art functionality strengthens our project management capabilities and enhances our studio efficiency,” says Gaël Seydoux, Producer, Ubisoft.

“Ubisoft’s Paris studio is working on some of the industry’s most exiting productions. We are very happy to provide them with a tool that gives benefits for all team members. With Hansoft they will be able to use agile and scheduling project management methodologies side by side, also within the same production,” says Patric Palm, Managing Director, Hansoft.

About Ubisoft

Ubisoft is a leading producer, publisher and distributor of interactive entertainment products worldwide and has grown considerably through a strong and diversified line-up of products and partnerships. Ubisoft has offices in 22 countries and sales in more than 50 countries around the globe. It is committed to delivering high-quality, cutting-edge video game titles to consumers. Ubisoft generated sales of €680 million for the 2006-2007 fiscal year. To learn more, please visit www.ubisoftgroup.com.

SEGA owned studio The Creative Assembly Australia (maker of Medieval II: Total War™ Kingdoms, due in autumn 2007) has successfully implemented the self-titled Hansoft tool for production management.

“Hansoft transformed our diligent game development team from a group that worked a lot of overtime to make a deadline, to a professional outfit that finished world class software ahead of schedule,” says Ashley Parker, Senior Producer, The Creative Assembly International.

“We are very passionate about production management practices and there is big money in shipping better games faster. Working with The Creative Assembly Australia has been very exiting since they are truly leading the way, bringing project management and collaboration to new levels. By using Hansoft they will benefit from a new breed of tools that are not only blistering fast and intuitive, but also features truly innovative and unique functionality,” says Patric Palm, Managing Director, Hansoft.

With the new 5.0 release Hansoft has applied its design and the performance of their unique technology to create an industry leading user friendly and really fast bug tracking tool. The functionality is designed to help integrate the QA process closer with development. With the Hansoft SDK real-time integration can be made with other bug databases and systems.

“Since moving over to Hansoft, instead of working overtime to meet deadline, now we are heading home on time, and spending our days adding extra polish to projects ahead of schedule. For game developers like ourselves, the new QA functionality will let our staff track both scheduled work and bug fixing in one application, which will help tighten our time management even further,” says Ashley Parker.

“With Hansoft 5.0 every team member will have tasks and bugs in one place and using the free QA-accounts for testers will help you save licensing costs,” says Patric Palm.

As seen in previous and current entries in Swedish Game Awards, Sweden's largest game development competition, student game developers have plenty of creativity, drive and passion. What they sometimes lack is organizational skills, and the tools to work together in an efficient way. Thanks to a unique collaboration between Swedish Game Awards and Hansoft, makers of the premium project management, collaboration and bug tracking tool for game developers, winners of the Best PC Game award can now realize their full potential and bring their game to market in an orderly manner.

Hansoft will offer the winning team a free, ten-user license of its new Hansoft 5.0 solution for one year, worth over 30 000 SEK. Hansoft 5.0 offers extensive functionality in scheduling, tracking, collaboration, bug tracking and document management and is used by many professional studios, such as Swedish Game Awards silver partner Starbreeze.

"Tools like Hansoft are important when going from a hobbyist development model to one that is viable for making a competitive game - that's why we're excited to have this license as a prize for our winners", says Swedish Game Awards Project Manager John-Philip Johansson.

"We are happy to help the next generation of Swedish game developers in producing their first commercial title", says Hansoft Managing Director Patric Palm. "Since Hansoft is suitable for use in both small-scale and large-scale game development, the team will benefit even more as it grows."

“We are very happy with the way we have changed the market for scheduling and Agile project management tools. Now it is time for the QA market, and it is not one day to early, says Hansoft Managing Director Patric Palm.

Hansoft is applying its intuitive design and the performance their unique technology to create an industry leading user friendly, innovative and really fast QA tool. Focus will be on defect tracking, communication, documentation and the functionality will be fully integrated in the rest of the Hansoft production management solution. The functionality will be designed to help integrate the QA process closer with development. With the Hansoft integration SDK real-time integration can be made with other QA databases and systems.

“There is an urgent need for QA-tools that are much faster and easy to use for the whole team. With the Hansoft QA-module you will also have tasks and bugs in one place and there is a lot of functionality there to help integrate the QA-process closer with development,” says Patric Palm.

“We have had a fantastic start of the year with many new clients in Australia, Europe and north America. We are now very happy to have been selected by Creat Studios since they have such a strong team for current and next-gen productions. Having a solid approach to project management is becoming increasingly important in the global marketplace for games development and Creat is definitely leading the way in this regard,” says Hansoft Managing Director Patric Palm.

“Creat Studios is committed to continually improving our project planning procedures to streamline our development process and provide our clients with accurate, real-time information about projects in development. Working with Hansoft takes us one step closer to that goal and offers our development teams an effective way to move forward from our previous project planning solution and thereby optimize our production pipeline for maximum efficiency,” says Vlad Starzhevsky, CEO, Creat Studios Inc.

The 4.3 release of Hansoft features full Unicode support (for example Russian and Japanese), a new dynamic reporting tool and many enhancements to both the task scheduling and the Agile functionality.

About Creat Studios

Creat Studios, Inc. is a premier developer of current and next-gen console and handheld games. Founded in 1990, Creat is headquartered in Canton, Massachusetts, with a development studio in St. Petersburg, Russia. They are official developer for

Playstation® Portable, PlayStation® 3, Nintendo DS and Xbox360 Console. www.creatstudios.com

In mid or large size development projects the amount of information can be massive and sometimes distributed on several teams. However, you can’t really keep your agility if you try to face this challenge with a tool that isn’t fast and easy. Hansoft has always been the most intuitive collaboration tool for not only project managers but all developers. Now teams using Agile methodology will also be able to benefit from this level of usability.

“The interest and demand for us to release support for Agile methodologies has been massive. There is a need in the market for a tool that can take Agile methodologies to the next level. This is of special importance within game development since these productions are specifically intensive, complex and demanding. We have also had studios running the beta of our Agile release in sharp projects with very positive results,” says Hansoft Managing Director Patric Palm.

“Managing a next-gen production becomes much easier with the benefits Hansoft provides for all team members in their daily work. We successfully implemented an Agile workflow in just weeks in the middle of a production with help of the Agile supporting functionality in Hansoft. It’s truly user-friendly and without the administrative time that other products require,” says Lars Johansson, Producer at Starbreeze, client of Hansoft.

Hansoft support different Agile methods like SCRUM and eXtreme Programming. Nevertheless, most organisations use modified adoptions of these methods and this is easily managed in Hansoft using customisable templates.

With the new Agile release of Hansoft you don’t need to have separate tools and a “religious war” between methodologies. You can now in one tool use Agile and task scheduling projects in parallel. You can even have Agile cells of sub teams within a development project. With Hansoft you don’t need to choose one methodology, now you can have both.

Using Hansoft in Agile projects will not only provide cutting-edge Agile functionality, but also give the benefit of all functionality integrated in the Hansoft solution. Workload and portfolio management, history, ghost resources, client and outsourcing partner integration, document management and much more will all be there.

“Hansoft not only helps us coordinate our publishing work but also gives us real-time tracking of progress in our game development projects. This makes it easier to collaborate with development studios around the globe,” says Chester Aldridge, Chairman/CEO of Red Mile Entertainment.

“We are very excited about providing Red Mile Entertainment with a tool that shrinks the world. The unique performance and functionality of Hansoft brings publishers, studios and outsourcing partners closer and we believe this is key to successful and cost-effective international game development,” says Hansoft Managing Director Patric Palm.

About Red Mile Entertainment

Red Mile Entertainment, Inc. is a worldwide developer and publisher of interactive entertainment software. Headquartered in Sausalito, California, the company creates, incubates and licenses premier intellectual properties and develops products for console video game systems, personal computers and other interactive entertainment platforms. www.redmileentertainment.com

“Eurocom has established a strong track record for time-critical projects, and is actively recruiting for a number of exciting projects on next and current generation platforms. Hansoft’s fast and easy state-of-the-art functionality strengthens our project management capabilities and enhances our studio efficiency,” says Hugh Binns, Director, Eurocom.

“Eurocom has one of the most solid track records in the market and a history of focusing on good project management practices,” says Hansoft Managing Director Patric Palm.

“We are proud to provide Eurocom with a tool that will help them put stress away from management and empower their teams to deliver even faster on desired quality and budget,” says Patric Palm.

Hansoft recently also announced its 3.2 release with project history analysis and enhanced functionality for involving publishers and outsourcing partners in the project.

“We believe tighter collaboration will be increasingly important but also more difficult. Hansofts integrated solution will leverage the growing teams to their full potential,” says Patric Palm.

About Eurocom Entertainment Software

Eurocom was founded in October 1988 by current owners Mat Sneap, Tim Rogers, Neil Baldwin, Ian Sneap and Hugh Binns. Eurocom has steadily expanded to cover all the major consoles and handhelds, and has developed over 70 titles in that time. Eurocom’s development team of 235 talented staff is based in Derby, UK. Previous Eurocom developments have included many of the biggest selling titles in the industry including games based on James Bond, Harry Potter, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Batman, Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, and Tarzan. Eurocom’s last published game is Ice Age 2 : Meltdown, released in March 2006 by Vivendi for PS2, Gamecube, Xbox and PC. Eurocom’s most recent announced project is the development of next-generation games based on the Pirates of the Caribbean for Buena Vista Games, due for release in 2007.

- Hansoft has always been a fast and easy collaboration tool for not only project managers but all developers. Now teams using agile methodology will also be able to benefit from the usability, says Hansoft Managing Director Patric Palm.

Hansoft is used for managing tasks and collaboration on a day by day basis by programmers, artists, project mangers and producers. Hansoft is also used by executives for portfolio management and by clients and outsourcing partners to be closely involved in the production without having access to its all parts.

- We believe the Hansoft level of usability is key in mid or large size agile productions where the amount of information is massive and distributed on several teams. You can’t really be agile if the used tool isn’t fast and easy, says Patric Palm.

With the new agile release projects using agile methodology with backlogs, iterations, burndowns etc can exist parallel with task scheduling projects. Resource usage and portfolio management can then be run in one integrated solution. Agile can also be used for a subproject within a production project. For example the milestone plan and parts of the production which naturally use task scheduling can be managed parallel to parts of the project that uses agile methodology.

- With Hansoft you don’t need to have separate tools and a “religious war” between methodologies. You can now in one tool use agile and task scheduling projects in parallel. You can even have agile cells of sub teams within a development project. With Hansoft you don’t need to choose one methodology, now you can have both, says Patric Palm.

- The new feature Ghost Resource mode enables project managers to create ghost resources and assign them tasks without paying for more users. When the planned project then goes live the ghosts can easily be converted to real resource accounts and involved in the project work. Since our 2-user trial license has an unlimited period, the ghosts make Hansoft not only a more powerful, but also a free of charge alternative to standard project planning applications. Migrating old plans into Hansoft is also done with a click, says Hansoft Managing Director Patric Palm.

In addition to analysing resource usage, task activity can now also be analysed on a portfolio level.

- Say that you want to know what all programmers are doing in all projects the upcoming two weeks and what tasks are overdue. With this new Find all functionality coordination between projects is made easier, says Patric Palm.

The time reporting module (Euro 3.00 extra per user per month) is now upgraded with dynamic fields to support the specific needs of different organisations.

- If wanted, you can now use a digital version of the traditional time clock, says Patric Palm.

- Most important is the new delegation functionality that allows producers and project managers to delegate responsibility for planning, tracking and managing to leads and others in an infinite number of levels. This puts a lot of stress away from the producers, empowers the team and increases agility, says Hansoft Managing Director Patric Palm.

Games development projects are intensive, complex and demanding. When teams grow larger like in next-gen productions, pipeline management and resource coordination rapidly grows more challenging. Hansoft now features support for multiple resource