Progressive Media, one of Europe’s leading developers of games for portable devices, has today unveiled “RocketFuel”, a complete development platform tailored specifically to meet the needs of developers and publishers targeting a wide range of devices across multiple platforms.

With the large number of new platform technologies and distribution channels opening up to game publishers and developers, there is great opportunity in cost-efficiently launching games across multiple platforms. Success for publishers and developers will be determined by how well global launches of high-quality titles can be managed across both J2ME, iPhone, Brew, Android, N-gage, Nintendo DSi, and other upcoming mobile platforms.

RocketFuel allows developers to design for and deploy to highly fragmented environments across multiple technology platforms – And to focus on a single set of strong tools and technologies for the entire process.

“For any developer, there is great challenge in deploying compelling, innovative games across different platforms”, explains Thomas Nielsen, CEO of Progressive Media. ”Fragmentation is constantly introduced, and the traditional approach of developing for one platform and porting to others becomes increasingly unsustainable. Developers will need to work smarter, flatten learning curves, and accelerate time to market – Something that is going to require new approaches and excellent tools.”

Rocket Fuel allows developers to work in best-of-breed visual development and debugging environments, in one programming language, with one tool-chain, regardless of target platform(s) or device(s).

RocketFuel offers a number of advantages to traditional development:

• Embraces fragmentation
Introducing component-based design and development. Design once with fragmentation in mind, implement scalable features and automatically deploy those features that make up the perfect game on the target platform/device.

• Streamlines the development process
Allows developers to work in a single highly productive environment, regardless of target platform(s). Work, build, test and debug for any platform using Microsoft Visual Studio, supported by proprietary game-development specific tools.

• Reduces cross-platform and device deployment cost
Cross-compile codebase on to any platform. Write everything in manageable, easy-tomaintain Java or C#; single-click compile to any Java or /C++/ObjC-based platform.

• Improves productivity and reduces time to market
A single development environment reduces the learning curve for new platforms. One streamlined asset pipeline capable of feeding a single asset library into any platform.

In comparison to several existing technologies assisting mobile developers in cross-platform development and porting, RocketFuel is not a black-box technology solution that ports reference versions to other platforms. Instead, RocketFuel breaks with traditional “reference version thinking”, and allows developers to properly design and implement products from the ground up with fragmentation in mind.

RocketFuel is already in use by Progressive Media on a number of projects for leading mobile game publishers, and the company is currently planning to make the platform available to 3rd party developers from Q3 2009. Publishers and developers interested in further information are invited to sign up at www.progressivemedia.dk/technology.