Xona Games announced a finalist in a $200,000 I-3 Technology Start-Up Competition.

Xona Games has been announced a round two finalist in InNOVAcorp's 2009 I-3 Technology Start-Up Competition.  We are a top 5 finalist in Zone 2 competing for $100,000 and $40,000 first and second place award packages, and a top 25 finalist across all five zones competing for an additional $100,000 provincial award.  We have to place above three other start-ups to win $40,000, four to win $100,000, and eight to win $200,000!  Wish us luck!

InNOVAcorp has posted the top 25 finalists.  We only compete with the top 5 finalists from Zone 2 of Lunenburg, Queens, Shelburne and Yarmouth counties (of Nova Scotia, Canada), for now:

Top 25:

“At this point in the competition, we have identified the 25 most compelling companies,” said Dan MacDonald, president and CEO of InNOVAcorp. “We are very pleased with the quantity and quality of the submissions and look forward to getting a more in-depth look at them in round two.”

Top 5 (Zone 2):

Congratulations to the following Nova Scotia companies that will move forward to round two of the I-3 Technology Start-Up Competition.

Gateway Geomatics—Jeff McKenna, Lunenburg
A software tool for publishing spatial information to the Internet using the Open Source MapServer Product, focused on Microsoft Windows users.

Ocean Leader Fisheries Ltd. —Milton LeBlanc and Bruce LeBlanc, Lower Wedgeport
An anti-inflammatory sea cucumber extract for the companion pet market.

SIGN-MARK-SIGN Ltd.—Terry Hawkins, Shelburne
An innovative fibre-based material designed for road signs which reduces cost and increases product strength.

Terradyne Energy Systems Inc.—Mark Lowe, Bridgewater
An innovative process to dramatically increase the heating properties of wood chips and wood pellets.

Xona Games—Matthew Doucette and Jason Doucette, Yarmouth
An award winning XBOX game developer.

History:

On October 8th, 2009, Xona Games entered InNOVAcorp's I-3 Technology Start-Up Competition, a competition based around start-up technology compaines based in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia:

I-3: Innovation, Idea, Implementation

The I-3 Technology Start-Up Competition is a competition for Nova Scotians with potential new knowledge-based businesses. The purpose of the competition is to foster and support the entrepreneurial spirit in the business community across Nova Scotia and to encourage the formation of new knowledge-based start-up companies. InNOVAcorp is looking for high potential export oriented early stage companies with commercializable products and/or services.

The competition will be held in five zones covering all of Nova Scotia. There will be a first and second place winner from each zone who will be presented with an award package worth $100,000 and $40,000 respectively. A provincial winner will be selected from the first place zone winners. The provincial award is a $100,000 HPi Microfund investment.

Also See:

• Duality ZF (official developer site)
• CBC News (TV, radio, website)
• Duality ZF Dream Build Play 2009 Top 20 Finalist (2nd in Canada, 7th in the world)
• Interviews (Xona Games, Duality ZF)
• Duality ZF Promo Materials

External Links:

• Duality ZF (official game site)
• Duality ZF Forums (hosted on xbox.com)
• Xona Games (YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Vimeo)
• Dream Build Play (Microsoft's XNA Game Studio Contest)
• Xbox LIVE Indie Games* (xbox.com, Xbox Forums)
• Imphenzia Music (creator of the Duality ZF soundtrack)
• InNOVAcorp (Twitter, Facebook)

*Xbox LIVE Indie Games formerly known as Xbox LIVE Community Games.

About the Author:  I am Matthew Doucette of Xona Games, an award-winning, team-of-two indie studio concentrating on "intense retro" games (Xbox LIVE, PSN, WiiWare, and Windows PC). We've released Decimation X (XBLIG), a 1-4 player shmup, #1 best selling and #1 top rated XBLIG in Japan. We're working on Duality ZF (XBLA), a groundbreaking 1-4 player shmup, which placed #1 in Canada and #5 in the world in Microsoft's Dream Build Play 2010 contest. It features dual play, the ability to control two fighters at once, and a massively upgradable 32-stage spread/laser weapon system. 4 player dual play allows up to eight fighters at once.  Many of these features are never before seen shoot'em up firsts. Both games feature beautiful electronic Imphenzia soundtracks.  Help spread the word with our official dualityzf.com and decimationx.com websites.

P.S. Watch out for Score Rush (official website scorerush.com), another 1-4 player shmup. Coming soon to XBLIG.

*Shmup also known as: shoot'em up, 2D shooter, scrolling shooter, space shooter, spaceship shooter, retro shooter, etc.