Tag: David Solari

Jagex Hires David Solari As Chief Marketing Officer


Jagex today announced the hiring of David Solari as the company’s new Chief Marketing Officer. David Solari is the former Vice President of Codemasters, where he oversaw the release of Lord of the Rings Online, Dungeons and Dragons Online, Archlord, and RF Online. At Jagex, Solari will take over and oversee all Jagex marketing activities.

According to the press report, Jagex sees 2012 as “scheduled to be one of the most significant years in the studio’s history.” Jagex currently has three MMOs, Stellar Dawn, 8Realms, and Transformers Online, scheduled for release this year, as well as the continued maintenance and weekly updating of the company’s current staple: RuneScape.

David Solari’s effect on Jagex’s marketing is sure to be seen in the coming months.

(Source: Jagex email press release)

Codemasters: APB Could Work…Just Not By Us.


It could by Hi-Rez?

Codemasters General Manager David Solari has been on MMO Fallout’s news bulletins before, with regards to Lord of the Rings Online Europe, but now I get to talk about him weighing his opinion on something not Turbine related. In an interview with Eurogamer on the topic of All Points Bulletin, Solari wanted to express his optimism that the defunct MMO could absolutely work, given the right time.

“[Realtime Worlds] made some key mistakes there, with some key stuff changed that game could be successful. I do think the game could be turned around but it would need nine months of hard work,” he added. “That game could have been successful but the cost of development and everything else was a huge thing. The money it had to make to support that was very high risk. If you could take a smaller team and make all the fixes and operate at a lower cost then it’s fairly unique: there’s not really anything else in the market out there.”

Solari makes a great point. During APB’s short life, I harped on a few points that the game could be fixed and turned around easily, but that Realtime Worlds would be fighting against the clock to fix the shooting and driving mechanics being lackluster in a driving and shooting game. But who exactly is going to pick up APB, Mr. Solari. You?

“We have not picked up APB,” he said, definitively. “I can answer you definitively,” he echoed, “we haven’t picked that up.”

Damn. Well there is still the possibility of Epic Games taking over. More on APB as it absolutely refuses to die.

The Technical Issues Are A Lie: Codemasters Reveals


No Dice, Europe

I’ve been speculating for a while now that there is more to this delay of Lord of the Rings Online in Europe than Codemasters has been explaining. On my earlier articles, I noted my thoughts that Turbine had something to do with the delays, although my assumption that Turbine was attempting to take back LOTRO in Europe was obviously incorrect. Codemasters’ General Manager David Solari put out a notice today that the issues were not, in fact, technical, and that Codemasters was having contractual issues that were delaying the launch of LOTRO F2P EU.

“This is the reason why we have been unable to provide you with any substantial information as to when we will go Free-to-Play, despite the desire to share this with you.
Unfortunately a contract was required in order to go Free-to-Play and this has taken much longer to conclude than expected.”

My money says this can be traced back to money, namely how much Turbine wanted in royalties and how much Codemasters wanted to pay under the new contract. Either way, the contract has been concluded, and Codemasters is on their way to a full free to play launch.

We can confirm the launch is imminent and we should be able to announce the dates later this week/early next week.

You can read the rest of Solari’s comments at the above link. More on Lord of the Rings Online as it appears.