Headquartered in London Ontario, Canada's 10th largest city, Digital Extremes got its foothold early on in the game industry during the shareware craze of the early 90's. Epic Pinball was a ten month project written entirely in assembly language by Schmalz that went on to become one of the most successful shareware games ever made, trailing only behind such industry greats as Duke3D and Doom. Sequels such as Silverball and Extreme Pinball were released shortly thereafter.
In1994, Digital Extremes partnered with Epic Games and co-created Unreal and its counterpart Unreal Tournament. Both games set new standards for first-person action games and broke new ground in online multiplayer gaming. Tremendously rich graphics, fine-tuned gameplay, frenetic action and high quality production value are descriptions that have become synonymous with any Unreal branded game. To date, the award-winning Unreal franchise, including Unreal, Unreal Tournament and Unreal Championship has sold more than 12 million units worldwide across the PC, PlayStation®2, Xbox™ and Dreamcast™ platforms.
Digital Extremes completed development on its newest IP for the current generation of consoles, Dark Sector®, which shipped to stores in 2008, using its proprietary next-gen technology, the Evolution Engine™. Following its success, the studio expanded to two teams to allow for simultaneous development on separate projects along with licensing the Evolution Engine as a full middleware solution to game developers worldwide.
Most recently, Digital Extremes has teamed up with 2K Games, working on Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc's franchise, BioShock®. In the same way that the Unreal franchise took graphic realism and multiplayer gaming to the next level, the BioShock franchise leads the industry in the use of narrative, style and affect not only in first-person shooters but in all action videogames. We look forward to the upcoming release of the next installment of BioShock in early 2010.