Id Software Partners With IGA on Forthcoming Quake Live Title, Beta Signups Open

In-game advertisers IGA Worldwide and Id Software announced today from the Games Developer Conference that it will be forming a partnership on the upcoming FREE game, Quake Live. Formerly known as Quake Zero, Quake Live will be the next iteration in the Quake series as a re-creation of Quake 3 with new online competitive features inside a free, downloadable client.

Although there has been notion that the game would be playable inside a web-browser, a statement on the official IGA Worldwide website states that "Quake Zero [Live] portal will offer gamers a downloadable Client allowing them to launch into an updated free-to-play iteration of the game directly from the Quake Zero [Live] site".

"IGA understands game developers and game players which makes them the perfect partner for Quake Live. Whether it's been the ease of implementing their SDK or just their excitement about QUAKE LIVE, they have been fantastic to work with," said Todd Hollenshead, CEO of id Software. "As we work to bring QUAKE-style deathmatch excitement to the masses, IGA has fully supported our vision."

Quake Live's expected features include a matchmaking service, statistical tracking, sponsored tournaments and lots of community interaction. Longtime community made features such as GTV and competitive mods OSP and CPMA have not yet been discussed, but are as well expected to be included. Integrated with IGA's proprietary SDK, Quake Live will offer companies and agencies the opportunity to target brands to audiences within a broadly accessible version of one of the world's premiere game franchises. This would allow tournament organizers and their sponsor partners a broader platform then has ever been presented in a competitive gaming format.

"id Software is among the proverbial godfathers of modern gaming and we are thrilled to be working with them on their first title in our 'freemium' category," said Justin Townsend, CEO of IGA Worldwide. "This partnership is only the latest testament to the increasing acceptance of in-game as an effective, measurable advertising medium and a strategic revenue opportunity for publishers and developers.

The first Quake Live screenshots posted by Kotaku have already received some scrutiny from the community, with many users stating that they're either not real Quake Live screenshots, or that they're disappointed by the lack of graphical update. "The screenshots showcasing the new Visor brightskin are indeed for Quake Live", id Software Community Liaison, Adam "SyncError" Pyle told Gameriot.com.  "Quake Live brings an updated experience to the Quake III Arena title, with a great focus centered around community, competition, matchmaking, statistics and social networking."

Signups for the Quake Live beta have opened on the game's official new website. Users are prompted to register their email for the chance to beta the highly anticipated future of the Quake series.

In an interview with Gameriot from QuakeCon 2007, Id Software Executive Producer Marty Stratton stated that the forthcoming Quake Live game will be a testing ground for the next original title in the Quake series, a new arena game that may or may not be called Quake 5. Quake Live is a "beta test in deploying different systems, spectating ability,
matchmaking, doing different tournaments, collecting data, all that
stuff that goes into the game. On a high level, [the next Quake Arena game will] be very much like
Quake 3 Arena in that it's fast paced, primarily a dueling game but
will have team aspects to it. High action, high energy, likely built on
id Tech 5, and stylistically from just about every aspect including
user interfaces, scoreboards and stats, we will be thinking of the game
in terms of a sport. That means different things to a lot of different
people but that's the core of what we want."