Media Kit: Press Releases

GAMESVILLE.COM BOASTS LARGEST SINGLE REAL-TIME ONLINE GAME EVER

BOSTON, MA - January 18, 1999 - nineCo, Inc., announced today that their Web site, Gamesville.com, hosted the largest real-time online game ever. Two thousand eight hundred forty nine Internet users played against each other in the largest single Web game ever, competing for the coveted prize of $700 in the site's unique, free-to-play, bingo-style game Catchup CoverallTM. The winner, James Merideth from Columbia, South Carolina, won big by being the first to completely cover his CatchUp CoverAll card.

"At first I was shocked," said Meredith, who was aware that he was competing against nearly three thousand Bingo-mad Web surfers. "Then, I felt very happy, because I didn't believe I'd ever win it, but I did."

The January 5th competition was the first time 2849 people were simultaneously participating in the same Internet real-time game at the same time. Gamesville.com's unique, proprietary game platform software and specially tuned equipment allows this level of capacity - and considerably greater levels - on their Web site.

CatchUp CoverAll is the new spin-off of Gamesville.com's free bingo-style game show, The Bingo Zone®. The fast-paced, high-stakes CatchUp CoverAll game takes traditional bingo to warp speed, and gives it an entirely new twist, in which players race to cover an entire bingo card in a brief period with new balls arriving very quickly (two new balls every 26 seconds). The minimum prize is $100, and the prize payout increases if there is no winner, growing as high as $1000. A new game begins every ten minutes.