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Technology Stocks : Uproar.com -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: david barr who wrote (2)	3/29/1999 9:33:00 PM
From: david barr	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 16

Game Show Battle Heats Up Online thestandard.net By Lessley Anderson The top online game show sites, Uproar and Sony's The Station, are at it again in a battle that pits Family Feud against Jeopardy. Uproar's recent partnership with media company Pearson Television gives Uproar's parent, E-Pub Holdings, online rights to high-profile game show brands Match Game and Family Feud in exchange for a 10.9 percent equity stake in E-Pub. Sony Online Entertainment, creator of the online versions of Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune, has claimed the edge on the high-trafficked Uproar because of its access to a TV network and well-known brands. Now Uproar can claim the same. Attendees of last year's NATPE trade show, the television industry's most hyped event, could have predicted the current online battle. The big buzz was the return of the game show. At that time, E-Pub Holdings, creator of Uproar, had been developing successful cobranded versions of their strangely popular trivia game Cosmo's Conundrum for sites including CBS SportsLine and CNN. Sony got in the game last spring, when it launched online versions of its popular game shows Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy. Now, one year later, TV has caught up. Match Game is back on the air and a new version of Family Feud is scheduled for the fall - and Uproar is slated to develop multiplayer online versions for them both. "This is very good for us, because we know how to make game shows work online," says E-Pub's president, David Becker. The online versions of Match Game and Family Feud will be hyped on air, in much the way Sony publicizes its Wheel and Jeopardy sites. Uproar and its affiliated sites currently have 4 million unique visitors a month, while Sony lags behind, according to RelevantKnowledge. Sony, however, claims 2.3 million registered users. "As far as Pearson and E-Pub go, it's certainly exciting news for the games world in general," says Sony Online Entertainment President Lisa Simpson. "Pearson has some great titles, [but] we're continuing to tap into the vast library at Columbia TriStar. We think it's a challenging area." Sony will launch a much-talked-about online version of The Dating Game sometime this quarter, complete with funky avatars and the ability to flirt and chat in real time. In a move away from its game show market, the company has also started a game-development company called Red Eye Interactive to create titles that will appeal to The Station's active gamer audience. Red Eye is a spin-off of Sony Computer Entertainment Group's 989 Studios, which has created fantasy games for the Sony PlayStation. "Our goal is to be the dominant gamer destination on the Net, so we want to offer a broad slate of games," says Simpson. "We've noticed crossover in our college student audience from role-play games like ChronX to our game show properties." Uproar's Becker says his company has no plans to woo the gamer audience. "The gamer-teen market seems to be Sony's new thing. As a company, I think what we're looking to do is to reach broad audiences where we can on the Net." And that means game shows.