For Immediate Release

Contact:
Sarah Kornfeld
+1.415.246.9654
pr@zenentertainmentnetwork.com

ZEN Entertainment™ Tournament Cloud

Tournament-style platform chosen by high profile partners

Palo Alto, California (July 28, 2010) Today, ZEN announced its new ZEN Entertainment Tournament Cloud at the AlwaysOn Conference. The Tournament Cloud creates critical mass by leveraging a shared player liquidity pool. This provides the players, partners, brands and advertisers inside the Cloud access to a customized and branded in-game experience.

ZEN Entertainment, a business unit of ZEN Gaming, Inc. of Las Vegas, stated that social, economic and experiential Tournament-style games are evolving at unprecedented speeds. The attraction of social, casual and mobile games has caught not only the attention of corporate America, but established lifestyle partners as well. The attraction of product and brand immersion in game-play environments, the marketing potential for virtual and physical goods, and the extensions of brand loyalty are just a few of the key drivers behind the power of Tournament-styled game play.

“Players are becoming more and more adept at evaluating and choosing the games that best meet their wants and needs. They crave an engaging experience that spans online, mobile, social and live environments.  “Thrill-seeking players are demanding cross-platform applications," stated Vincent Zaldivar, President and Co-Founder of ZEN. “ZEN is leading the way, and has the metrics to prove it with over 67 minutes of session engagement.  Our players are getting what they want in thrilling tournament contests linked to highly desirable cash and prizes. We can scale the consumer experience working with partners who are seeking to add value to the game, the user, and the brand experience within the Tournament Cloud.”

According to Mike Fields, Executive Vice President of VideoPoker.com, a ZEN partner, “People like to engage in compelling game-play experiences online and to get the opportunity to win prizes. At Action Gaming, we want to expand these opportunities for lifestyle players worldwide, allowing new players to learn new games easily. The ZEN Tournament Cloud provides players with a tournament experience that engages and creates connections to live experiences in casinos”

The Limits of Current Social Gaming

 Many of today’s social games fall short of meeting a meaningful engagement threshold, with well over 90% of social game adopters walking away less than 30 days from adoption. Along with these retention issues, current social games have not mastered security issues inside social environments. Games offered on large social networks were never built to support Tournament style game play, nor allow games to offer valuable prizing.  The technical and security issues coupled with less dynamic games presently in the market inspired ZEN to leverage their gaming expertise and create the ZEN Tournament Cloud.

“We believe that there is an opportunity for a new breed of gaming company to stake out a substantial share of the market,” said Pat McEntee, Chief Operating Officer of ZEN. “ZEN’s Tournament Cloud has proven itself to provide superior player experiences. We already have major lifestyle, media, and brand partners in place and are now amongst the largest monthly prize award operators in the world. Current social networks do not offer free-to-play Tournament-style experiences that are secure for players and partners and award real and valuable prizes. This is, to say the least, a 'game changer'.”

The ZEN Tournament Cloud has the following core advantages that provide the foundation of next generation Tournament-style experiences online, mobile, and live:

ZEN TOURNAMENT-STYLE ARCHITECTURE PROVIDES IMPROVED MONETIZATION

The Technology Platform allows ZEN to generate revenue from four areas, (1) Advertising & Sponsorships (2) Software & IP Licensing (3) Social Gaming digital goods sales and (4) Branded Merchandizing. ZEN has aggregated over 200 web sites through June 2010 with its Tournament Cloud architecture. Integration into the cloud provides partners:

• Turnkey branded solution with hooks into a common tournament lobby and competition cycle
• Network architecture provides 24-7 diverse player liquidity and eliminates operational and prize costs for partners without losing the brand experience
• Adds a new database capture and customer retention tool
• Collects valuable demographic and behavioral consumer data in exchange for continued game play

 TOURNAMENT-STYLE SOCIAL EXPERIENCE: ONLINE, MOBILE & LIVE

• A more compelling free to play social gaming experience with the introduction of winning cash and experiential prizes
• Tournament orientation maximizes player retention per session and incentivizes user to make frequent return visits
• Multiple-Game Styles to choose from and tournament formats to play in

UNIQUE BRAND ENGAGEMENT WHILE LEVERAGING CLOUD COMMUNITY

• Provides a more engaging gaming experience. In June 2010, players on the network spent 67 minutes as an average user session, with over 40% spending over 4 hours per session.  Average session players viewed over 15 minutes of streaming videos and were exposed to hundreds of targeted in-game ad units
• Allows brands and advertisers to “get in the game” reaching consumers through the popularity of poker, video poker and social gaming
• Player-selected tournaments provide brands with targeted entrants already interested in entering experiential prize tournaments offered by specific that sponsor.

ABOUT ZEN GAMING
http://www.zengaming.com

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