



[This unedited press release is made available courtesy of Gamasutra and its partnership with notable game PR-related resource GamesPress.]

The Develop in Brighton Conference (19-21 July) will host an exclusive PlayStation®Vita (PS Vita) technical talk – the first since its announcement in the US earlier this month. The Coding Track Keynote will take place on Wednesday 20 July by Sony Computer Entertainment. Head of developer services Kish Hirani will co-present the keynote – De Re PlayStation®Vita – with colleague Neil Brown, senior engineer in the SCEE R&D department. Hirani will bring delegates up to speed with the PlayStation®Vita hardware and highlight various software development tools and technologies available to jump-start developing on this exciting new platform. Brown will then explain the technical side of how the graphics pipeline on PS Vita works. The talk will include useful tips and techniques found by studios working on the launch titles. “We are delighted to be given the opportunity to give the coding keynote at Develop Conference this year," Kish Hirani commented. “Year after year, Brighton continues to be one of my favourite places for sharing information with the games developer community and, following the E3 announcement, this year the Develop Conference becomes the first public technical level disclosure of our exciting new portable games console, PS Vita." Delegates will also get the chance to find out how PlayStation®Network’s feature set is being expanded for PlayStation®Vita in a another talk by Phil Rogers, manager of SCEE R&D’s Network Team – Building Community with PlayStation® Network. Rogers will look at PSN features from a technical perspective, and how they are used in PlayStation® games, as well as an in-depth look at the new community and location features that will arrive with the launch of PS Vita - including Party and near. Other Coding Sessions include: From Phones to High End PC’s: How to Scale Your Technology Aras Pranckevicius, Unity Technologies Crysis 2 Multiplayer: A (Mostly Technical) Postmortem Peter Hall and Mark Tully, Crytek UK Engineering the Total War AI: From Soldier to Battalion Scott Pitkethly, The Creative Assembly Discussion of Future Directions in Games Technology (Panel) Andrew Richards, Codeplay; Bjorn Toft Madsen, Microsoft; Julien Merceron, Square Enix A RA#O#Z By Any Other Name – Capturing Player-Generated Names Using Kinect Speech Recognition Mike Froggatt, Microsoft Game Studios Dynamic Resolution Rendering Doug Binks, Intel Conference passes can be purchased online at: www.developconference.com Notes to editors: Kish Hirani Bio: Kish is the Head of Developer Services at Sony Computer Entertainment Europe Research & Development department and is responsible for developing and managing resources for all SCEE’s developer support-facing technical activities. Kish has been in the industry for over 15 years starting his industry career as a programmer after graduating with an MSc in Computer Science moving to technical director or equivalent roles at development studios as well as publisher houses. He is now coming to 4 years with SCEE as their Head of Developer Services. Neil Brown Bio: Neil is Senior Engineer for Sony Computer Entertainment Europe Research & Development department, and has given technical talks at a number of conferences around the world on various topics for SCE. As well as providing technical support and performance advice to PlayStation developers, he also coordinates the training provided to all PlayStation developers in the SCEE covered regions. He has been training, supporting and working with developers on PS VITA from the day they received early prototype kits. Neil has been at SCEE for 5 years and previously worked at Codemasters. He has Masters Degrees in both Software Engineering and Astrophysics. Phil Rogers Bio: Phil has been with Sony Computer Entertainment Europe's Research and Development team since 1998. He has worked on a number of consumer facing products, most recently the VidZone client on PS3. His team supports developers across the SCEE region for all things network and online related, including developing with the PlayStation Network libraries. About the Develop Conference: The sixth Develop Conference will take place at the Hilton Metropole in Brighton, UK, from 19 - 21 July 2011. It attracts around 1300 game developers from over 20 different territories and has become firmly established as the leading conference in Europe for games developers. Delegates can apply for conference passes at: www.developconference.com. Delegates can purchase one, two and three day passes to Develop priced at £330, £565 and £680 respectively. Audio track passes are £280. Indie Dev Day passes are £75 Evolve focuses on how to develop games for new and emerging platforms, new technologies and new markets like social and casual gaming. It opens on Tuesday 19 July then continues with individual sessions within the main conference programme on Wednesday 20 July, which are cross-discipline and have a more general appeal. Indie Dev Day the new day-long conference and networking event running alongside Develop is designed for established independent studios, new start-ups, wannabe indies, freelance developers and students. The sessions will complement the brand new Indie Dev Showcase: a dedicated area within the Develop Expo (20 - 21 July) featuring some of the exciting and new indie projects currently under development. Games:Edu is a one-day conference taking place on Wednesday 20 July alongside Develop, which brings together the UK's foremost educators from across all disciplines to connect directly with developers and games producers, to exchange ideas and perspectives. About Tandem Events: Tandem Events has over 20 years of experience in organising market-leading exhibitions, conferences and events across a number of industry sectors, including Develop and Evolve in Brighton, Evolve in London, Develop in Liverpool, Games:EDU, Games Marketing Forum and Games Grads. www.tandemevents.co.uk