HELSINKI – MultiTouch, Ltd., developer of the world’s first modular multi-touch LCD screen for large-scale displays, and Intervisio, the leading Finnish crossmedia production company, today announced the launch of the first interactive, multitouch display game show at MIPCOM. ‘THE WALL,’ a show where couples compete in fifteen-minute physical action and knowledge-based games that involve touching elements on a 17.2 foot (5.25 meter) long multitouch display wall, has already been optioned in the U.S. and the UK. The show’s touchscreen games will be made available as online apps for the play-at-home audience, providing unique sponsorship opportunities beyond traditional advertising blocks.
Intervisio will present ‘THE WALL’ at MIPCOM 2011 this week in Cannes, France, with its distributor, Nordic World AS. Contact Jan Salling, Sales Director and Chief Operating Officer of Nordic World, on jan.salling@nordicworld.tv to set up a meeting at MIPCOM. Visit Nordic World’s stand at MIPCOM, R31.18, in the Palais des Festivals.
See the trailer for ‘THE WALL’ at http://www.youtube.com/user/multitouchfi#p/u/12/h7geQYsPM1o
‘The WALL’ involves 15 separate multitouch games, played out on 15 separate displays created by MultiTouch Ltd., where contestants can add to their prize pot in a series of rounds. In the final, one-minute round, contestants play an all-or-nothing game in which they can enter the “wall of fame” or lose everything. The show invites contestants to “get ready for your 15 minutes of game!” by conquering the wall.
“We were looking for a new game show format that would be both physically and mentally challenging, and could easily port to an online, at-home audience, and the MultiTouch displays seemed to offer a robust way for the contestants to play this kind of game,” said Antti Seppanen, CEO of Intervisio. “Rather than a static display, we challenge the contestants to conquer the wall, as it were. We think that this show has enormous global appeal, and we look forward to syndicating it as far as we can.”
MultiTouch and Intervisio collaborated on the format by building out a soundstage in the recently opened MultiTouch headquarters facility, located in the historic former Ford Motor Company building on the Helsinki harborside. The show is designed specifically around a wall of 15 MultiTouch Cell displays, in a 5 X 3 configuration, in the studio.
“Our conversations with television producers, to date, has largely been centered on static, single-unit displays for television hosts and presenters, which does not offer exciting possibilities for our technology, or for the audience,” said Petri Martikainen, CEO of MultiTouch Ltd. “Our collaboration with Intervisio, however, has broken the old paradigm of one-way information display on television, and created a truly interactive, multitouch game show format that plays to today’s audience in an exciting way.”
Introduced to the global market in 2009, the MultiTouch Cell product family has been sold in more than 40 countries, and installed in some of the most prominent international venues, including the recent Space Shuttle exhibit at NASA’s Space Center Houston; the Patina installations at Acme Brick stores; the Wall of Chile installation at the Chilean Pavilion at the Expo 2010 Shanghai China; the ‘One Road Interactive’ exhibit at the National Museum of Australia, and the Graffiti Bar installation in Tokyo. The Cell products are used for broadcast, retail, advertising, exhibitions, museums, education and design.
For more information, please visit www.multitouch.fi and www.multitaction.com, as well as the MultiTouch YouTube channel at
http://www.youtube.com/multitouchfi, and www.twitter.com/multitouchfi for further MultiTouch updates.
About Intervisio
Intervisio is the leading Finnish crossmedia production company, specializing in the development of new intellectual property that includes innovative production formats that combine television shows with Internet and mobile communities. The company is active in the areas of licensing and merchanding, and AFP, and is constantly developing alternate financing solutions for content creation. Founded in 2000, Intervisio is the only Finnish TV production firm to have won an EMMY award, for its 2008 production of ‘Staraoke,’ for Best Interactive Format. Intervisio is headquarted in Helsinki. For more information, please visit the company web site at www.intervisio.fi.
About MultiTouch Ltd.
MultiTouch is a leading developer of interactive display systems, based on proprietary software and hardware designs. The company is headquartered in Helsinki, Finland, with U.S. offices in Santa Clara, California and New York City. Its systems are currently in use in more than 40 countries around the globe. For more information, please visit www.multitouch.fi.
EDITOR’S NOTE:
If you would like a color photograph of Petri Martikainen, CEO of MultiTouch Ltd.; Antti Seppanen, CEO of Intervisio; production stills from ‘THE WALL,’ or MultiTouch product or installation shots, please go to http://multitouch.fi/about-2/photos/ or contact Chris Pfaff on +1-201-218-0262 or chris@chrispfafftechmedia.com
Contact:
Hannu Anttila
+358-50-385-5515
Hannu@multitouch.fi
Chris Pfaff
201-218-0262
chris@chrispfafftechmedia.com