Stourbridge, England, 15th September 2008. Data Design Interactive – a successful video games publisher and games developer are bucking the trend in the gaming industry. Most of their competitors are suffering in the worldwide credit crunch and as a result are either merging with others companies, downsizing or closing studios. By comparison over the last twelve months DDI has seen their company grow from strength to strength, resulting in an increase in staff, moving into a bigger studio premises in Stourbridge, UK and the opening of their Florida development studio in the United States.

12 months ago DDI launched their Popcorn Arcade range of Wii titles aimed at a family market for casual and social games. The Popcorn Arcade brand has been hugely successful, with sales worth 30 million Euros. DDI had more Wii titles ready last Xmas than EA, Ubisoft or other companies a thousand times bigger than themselves and their hard work and marketing strategy has enabled them to grab their targeted 40% market share of the European value priced Wii market.

The company has built on this success and with 28 titles released in just 12 months, this small UK developer and publisher has a highly productive and reliable record of releasing bite-sized, fun titles in order to establish a foothold in the cutthroat publishing market, where company values are regularly quoted in the $billion bracket. Put in perspective it is even more amazing when you realise that Data Design Interactive currently employs just 24 full-time development staff. This David, in the Goliath of the games industry is aiming to again shoot high for 2009. DDI will be intending to catch a similar segment of the lucrative sports market, with a new range of innovative sports based Wii titles published under the DDI name as full priced titles.

They currently have 6 different sports planned in the range, and they promise they will be adding a new twist to the sports genre, with more extensive use of the Wii controller than other titles and in addition each title will feature world class sports licences endorsing each of the products.

Stewart Green MD of Data Design Interactive said

“We have had a phenomenal first year exceeding our expectations; by being both a developer and publisher we have shown that we can be faster and more reliable than the companies a thousand times bigger than ourselves. We still intend to still expand our lead on the value priced titles, but as a company we also intend to produce a wide range of titles to appeal to different segments of the market. We have identified a gap in the sports genre market and next month we will be announcing the first of an exciting new sports range starting in Q1 2009. We are actively looking for worldwide publishing partners interested in working with us on this new venture.”