Hello Kitty MMORPG goes beta
Sanrio Digital’s “Hello Kitty Online” accepting players for closed beta

Sanrio Digital (www.sanriodigital.com) announced the closed beta launch of “Hello Kitty Online”, a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) based on the famous Sanrio characters. Hello Kitty Online allows players to explore and adventure in Sanrio’s fantasy world, a magical land that has recently fallen under the influence of a mysterious and malevolent power.

Players for the closed beta version are invited to apply at the official game site (www.hellokittyonline.com) or community site (www.sanriotown.com) and experience Hello Kitty Online in advance of the game release expected in the second half of 2008. Targeting female players from their pre-teens to twenties, Hello Kitty Online is the first installable MMORPG to set its sights on this demographic profile.

More details at the Sanrio Digital Blog.

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A local Hong Kong Sanriotown campaign featuring Anna Sui and Hello Kitty!

Sanrio Digital uses the Video product of Outblaze which recently won the Asia Pacific Information & Communications Technology Alliance (APICTA) Awards in the category Tools & Infrastructure Application.

APICTA is a network of 16 Asian and Australasian countries and economies whose common goal is to increase awareness of information & communication technologies, stimulate ICT innovation and creativity, promote economic and trade relations, facilitate technology transfer, etc. Their yearly awards are among the most coveted by all manner of IT firms in the Eastern hemisphere.

The entry in the competition was Outblaze Video, a white label hosted social video platform for portals and media companies. It is also the engine behind Dream Studio http://video.sanriotown.com.

Sanrio Digital congratulates Outblaze for this award and thank them for sharing their technical expertise with Sanriotown users.

More Readings: Outblaze social video service wins APICTA Award

Congratulations to the team at Sanrio Digital!

Sanrio Digital today announced that Joichi Ito has joined the Company Board of Directors.

   Mr. Joichi Ito is the founder and CEO of the venture capital firm Neoteny.  He is a co-founder and board member of Digital Garage.  He is the Chairman of Six Apart Japan the weblog software company.  He is on the board of Technorati and helps run Technorati Japan.  He has created numerous Internet companies including PSINet Japan, Digital Garage and Infoseek Japan.  

   Besides business achievements, Mr. Ito is also the board of a number of various non-profit organizations including The Mozilla Foundation, The Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and WITNESS.  He is the chairman of the board of Creative Commons, a non-profit organization which proposes a middle way to rights management, rather than the extremes of the pure public domain or the reservation of all rights.  He has served and continues to serve on numerous Japanese central as well as local government committees and boards, advising the government on IT, privacy and computer security related issues.  He is currently researching "The Sharing Economy" as a Doctor of Business Administration candidate at the Graduate School of International Corporate Strategy at Hitotsubashi University in Japan.  

   He maintains a weblog "joi.ito.com" where he regularly shares his thoughts with the online community.  He enjoys the famous online game World of Warcraft (WoW) and is known as Guild Custodian of the WOW Guild "We Know".

   "I think that Hello Kitty and the Sanrio brand is one of the few global content assets from Japan that makes me proud to be Japanese," said Mr. Joichi Ito.  "That combined with the game and Internet savvy of Typhoon Games is an explosive (in a good way) combination and super-excited to be part of this process"

   About Sanrio Digital
   
   Sanrio Digital is a joint venture between Typhoon Games (HK) Ltd., and Sanrio Co. Ltd. whose aim is to focus on the digital expansion of Sanrio intellectual property assets. This effective collaboration will capitalize on the great number of IP assets that have not yet been fully digitally developed.  Furthermore, Sanrio Digital will hold exclusive rights to produce offline products based on its online productions, which is expected to create synergy between the Sanrio traditional offline business and the digital venture; studies have shown that higher revenue generation can be expected if Sanrio online and offline business complement each other.  

   For enquiries, please contact:

    Ms. Michelle Ho
    Sanrio Digital (HK) Ltd.
    Tel:   +852-2540-2237
    Fax:   +852-2803-0211
    Email: michelle@sanriodigital.com

http://www.sanriodigital.com

http://www.sanriotown.com

Representatives of Sanrio Digital launched Sanriotown Europe, a community site for European fans of Hello Kitty and friends at the GC Developer’s Conference (GCDC) last Wednesday, August 22, 2007. The event was well attended with around 220,000 visitors.

Sanriotown Europe contains all of the features found on the international version. In order to serve its users better, Sanriotown Europe will contain most of the widely used languages in the continent including French, German, Italian, Turkish, Spanish and English (UK). Users can now enjoy their favorite Sanrio characters, meet friends and play games in their own language. A computer was present on the booth where new users can sign up and start enjoying its great features.

The booth, sponsored by Burda Interactive Communities, was graced by none other than Miss Hello Kitty herself. A lot of activities were held, including a photo contest where visitors were given the opportunity to have their photo taken with Miss Kitty, and a draw was held on who had the best photo. A pink I-pod was given away to the winner of the contest, while t-shirts, handbags and key chains were given to other lucky contestants. More key chains and stickers were later given away to the crowd.

The large screen at the back of the booth featured the up coming Hello Kitty MMORPG trailer. Representatives of both Sanrio Digital and Burda Interactive Communities were there to present the new game and hand out flyers and give aways.

More information at http://www.sanriodigital.com/