Eidos signs David Bowie for Omikron

Eidos Changes Face of Games with David Bowie 12 May, 1999 - Eidos plc (“Eidos”), one of the world’s leading publishers of computer games has announced a collaboration with David Bowie for a new computer game Omikron:The Nomad Soul. Omikron: The Nomad Soul is a futuristic 3D action-adventure game. It will be released on PC CD-Rom and other games platforms in October 1999. David Bowie and Reeves Gabrels worked closely with the game’s developer, Quantic Dream, based in Paris, France. They spent several weeks with the development team and Bowie not only ‘plays’ the role of Boz, a character in the game but has created original music for the game including eight new songs. Bowie and his band also appear in the game as musicians in several bars in the Omikron city. Iman the world-famous model and Bowie’s wife is also featured as an ‘incarnable’ character in the game. “Eidos’ Omikron: The Nomad Soul has never-before-seen features. It’s set to be a massive, leading-edge game,” says Charles Cornwall, CEO of Eidos. “David Bowie’s involvement endorses the quality of the game and the fact that an artist of his calibre has the vision to recognise computer games as a vital component of media convergence.” “I moved right away from the stereotypical industrial game music sound,” says David Bowie. “My priority in writing music for Omikron was to give it an emotional subtext. It feels to me as though Reeves and I have achieved that.” Omikron has been over two years in development - it features real-time facial motion capture for the first time. It contains over 400 different sets in four huge cities; 140 characters in 3D real time and has four hours of dialogue – with more than 1,200 responses.