London – UK, January 18, 2006: Specialised digital entertainment agency Aura Play, and revolutionary gaming platform Xfire, today announced that the two companies had reached agreement for Aura Play to act as the sales and sponsorship agents for Xfire in the UK and Europe

Xfire provides gamers with a number of unique services, allowing gamers to play alongside each other with one click, providing in-game messaging between friends, even when they are playing different games. Traditionally it has been exceedingly difficult for online gamers to play alongside friends, as even when logging-on at the same time, it is more likely that they will be routed to different servers. Xfire’s simplification of online gaming has generated over three million users worldwide.

Paul Wright, MD of Aura Play says;

“Xfire is revolutionising the way that online gamers interact with each other and also how they react within their gaming environment. This is an audience of early adopters who spend over 80 hours per month playing online, and consequently consume very little traditional media. They are a hard audience to address and we firmly believe that Xfire will be among the services that bring the in-game advertising market to far a greater degree of maturity.”

Mike Cassidy, CEO of Xfire adds;

“Because of their ‘media aversion’, online gamers have always been a very difficult group to target, in that they are more likely to react against what they see as inappropriate commercial messages rather than to respond positively. For this reason it was very important that we chose a partner who understands the complexities and subtleties of our audience, but equally has the commercial aptitude to best address our advertising partners. Aura Play have demonstrated to us that they fit this bill very well and we look forward to a long and successful partnership.”

Additionally Xfire provides gamers with a powerful P2P file distribution system.

Another unique feature of X-fire is Auto Patching. It recognises the games that users play and then automatically downloads patches for them ensuring that gamers have the very latest updated versions of their games.