Announced two new additions to its Personal Digital Entertainment (PDE) solutions - the NOMAD® Jukebox and NOMAD® II MG. Both products include USB support, are programmable and support multi compressed audio formats including MP3 and WMA. With a 6GB storage capacity, Nomad Jukebox can store over 100 hours of digital audio.
Creative introduced DeskTop Theater™ PlayWorks 2500 speakers in Japan for the PlayStation®2 market. Featuring optical SPDIF connectivity, these speakers also support other popular next-generation gaming consoles with Pro Logic content.
Creative unveiled BlasterKey™ MP3, the industry's first Internet-centric MP3 Keyboard at the Winter NAMM 2000 show. This intelligent, 49-note MIDI keyboard is ideal for beginners, music lovers and Internet MP3 enthusiasts and provides downloadable new content and continual software upgrades via its website.
Creative invested in Soundbuzz.com, an online digital download music distributor that offers the sampling, promoting and purchasing of downloadable music from the Internet in secure MP3 format from Asian and international record labels, as well as from unsigned artists.
Invested in PixAround.com, a leading provider of 360° interactive Web solutions, which allows users to snap, stitch, publish! their own PixAround Webpages in three simple steps.
Creative announced two new speakers system for the highly anticipated PlayStation®2, the Cambridge SoundWorks® PlayWorks™ DTT2500 Digital and the Cambridge SoundWorks® PlayWorks™ PS2000. Both systems are equipped with an optical connection providing quick and easy connectivity to the PlayStation2 gaming console. The latter provides virtual 5.1 surround sound using a 2.1 speaker system.
Creative expanded its manufacturing facilities in Malacca under its wholly-owned subsidiary, Cubic Electronics Sdn. Bhd. This expansion is part of Creative's global strategy to enhance its manufacturing capabilities in new and higher value-added products such as PDE products and intelligent speakers.
Creative showcased the NOMAD® Jukebox amongst the world's latest contemporary and conceptually dynamic designs and products in the internationally renowned Design Museum in London.
Creative announced the availability of the new Sound Blaster® Live!™ 5.1 line of sound cards, which provides Dolby Digital® 5.1 multi-channel sound to consumers.
Creative shipped Cambridge SoundWorks® DeskTop Theater™ series: the DeskTop Theater 5.1 DTT3500 Digital, a complete high-end home entertainment speaker solution incorporating Dolby Digital 5.1 technology. DTT3500 Digital comes with a wireless remote control and is a powerful home theater speaker solution for use with either a Sony® PlayStation 2™ console, set-top DVD player or a PC.
Singapore's Prime Minister Mr Goh Chok Tong officially opened Creative Resource, Creative's worldwide corporate headquarters located at the International Business Park in Singapore.
Announced its Sound Blaster® Live!™ line of audio cards surpassed the one million mark in number of units shipped worldwide.
Introduced the NOMAD line of portable digital audio players. With support for the popular MP3 (MPEG 1, layer 3) audio compression standard, this new product line offers consumers a new way to download, transport and playback skip-free digital audio.
Creative secured the leadership position in U.S retail and distribution of PC speaker systems based on the recent PC Data report.
Creative drives into the expanding CD-RW market with its new Blaster® CD-RW 4224. The 4224 provides an easy-to-use solution for burning CD Media, copying and archiving on CDR and CDRewritable Media.
Announced plans to offer broadband Internet access solutions. Collaborates with Lucent Technologies and Centillium to offer high-speed, high-bandwidth solutions to enable media-rich content from the Internet.
Co-sponsors emerging artist stage at Woodstock'99 Music & Arts Fair in Rome, New York. Creative showcased LAVA! (Live Audio Visual Animation), a new technology that gives real-time visual expression to Internet music on the PC desktop, and its NOMAD line of portable MP3 digital audio players.
Creative's Environmental Audio Technology now de facto industry standard for immersive 3D gaming. Over 50 leading game titles were shipped with support for Creative's Environmental Audio Technology. Microsoft's licensing of EAX technology and its plans to incorporate effects into a future version of DirectX, further established Environmental Audio technology as the de facto standard for 3D game development.
Announced Sound Blaster® Live! Platinum audio card, a digital audio solution that provides a strong set of applications for Internet audio, music applications and gaming. The new accelerator boasts the new Live!™ Drive, an innovative front-end console that provides easy and convenient connectivity to a wide array of analog and digital devices.
Introduced the next-generation Creative NOMAD® II portable digital audio player at the 1999 Fall Internet World Convention in New York. Nomad II offers host of new features including USB connectivity and multiple Codec support.
Video Blaster® WebCam Go is the first ever portable PC camera that provides real-time Internet images and detaches from the PC to allow consumers to capture images on-the-go.
Introduced 3D Blaster®Annihilator that offers stunning features such as Hardware Transform & Lighting, Cubic Environment Mapping and Quad Pixel Pipeline Architecture with 32 MB of ultra fast memory and AGP 4X support, providing an unprecedented gaming experience.
Creative's Sound Blaster® line of audio products has surpassed the 100 million mark in the number of units shipped worldwide. This coincided with the 10th anniversary of the product's line launch.
Announced broad support for the Macintosh platform. Creative's popular line of Sound Blaster® Live! audio solutions and Personal Digital Entertainment (PDE) solutions - which include the NOMAD line of portable audio devices and the WebCam Go line of portable PC cameras - were the first in a series of products from Creative to support the Mac.
Launched Video Blaster® WebCam II digital color camera for the desktop that comes with features and productivity software that can enhance Internet experience such as jazz up a personal website, send a video greeting card or visit long distance friend.
Acquired the NetMedia group from OPTi, Inc to form a new subsidiary Ectiva Inc., which works closely with Creative's R&D department on developing new audio technologies.
Consolidated its China operations at the main Beijing office under Creative Future Computer.
At Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) 1998 in Atlanta, Creative announced that top developers including Accolade, Bungie, GT Interactive's Epic MegaGames/Digital Extremes and Fox Interactive have signed up to support Creative's Environmental Audio Extensions™. This was the latest applications programming interface (API) that allows developers to optimise their newest games to use the features in Creative's next-generation Environmental Audio platform.
Creative acquired Silicon Engineering, Inc., a key innovator in the design and development of integrated circuits for the multimedia, storage and communications markets.
HansVision Future 2000 is an Internet-enabled bilingual software program that comprises a Chinese word processor (HansWord), an English/Chinese two-way dictionary (HansBrowser) and an online translator of webpages from English to Chinese (HanSight). The advanced software package was deployed in all schools in Singapore from July 1998.
Unveiled Sound Blaster® PCI128 and PCWorks FourPointSurround - the first complete audio system for multi-channel surround sound - at a highly attractive price.
Launched Sound Blaster® Live!™, the revolutionary new PCI audio solution that incorporates the superior surround-sound rendering of Environmental Audio to deliver real audio experience that goes beyond "Hollywood" quality audio and offers unprecedented immersive audio.
Announced the shipment of the computer industry's first complete desktop theater system - Creative PC-DVD Encore 5X and Cambridge SoundWorks DeskTop Theater 5.1 - for the PC.
Unveiled its new corporate headquarters facility in Singapore, Creative Resource, on February 21. Strategically located in the premier hub for business and technology, the facility houses the entire Singapore HQ operations including R&D, sales, marketing, administration & manufacturing.
Creative Inspire kicked off as the first of its kind Internet application that brings entertainment broadcasting to Internet users by providing all the tools and content they need to listen, watch and experience multimedia Internet entertainment
Patented SoundFont® Technology in Sound Blaster AWE64 was widely supported by top game developers. The proliferation of SoundFont usage provided users an easy format to change instrument sounds on the PC as easy as changing character fonts in a word processor.
Officially opened its African subsidiary, Creative Labs (Pty) Ltd to take charge of sales, marketing and customer support services in the continent's growing IT market.
Launched Graphics Blaster® Extreme, a high performance graphics accelerator card based on Permedia®2 processor from 3Dlabs that delivers superior 2D/3D quality and upgradeable to future technology such as hardware DVD playback.
At Comdex Fall 1997 in Las Vegas, Creative demonstrated its new Environmental Audio solutions that would drive the audio industry to the 21st century. Announcements made include:
- EMU10K1 technology, the cornerstone of Creative's Environmental Audio system. The EMU10K1 audio processor, with 1000+MIPS and 2 million transistors, is the most powerful processor ever designed by the joint E-mu /Creative Technology Center.
- E-mu Environmental Modeling™ and Creative Multi Speaker Surround™ technologies that use state-of-the-art algorithms for sound effects and accurate acoustical rendering of 3D objects and its reflections in real life
- Sound Blaster® AWE64D, an advanced PCI audio card designed specifically for the OEM market.
- 3D Blaster® Voodoo2 - the fastest new 3D accelerator solution using the Voodoo2 graphics chip from 3Dfx Interactive.
Acquired Ensoniq Corp., a key innovator in the design and development of PCI audio microchip technology who has gained strong brand recognition with its line of electronic musical instruments.
Formed merger with Cambridge SoundWorks, Inc., making Cambridge SoundWorks a wholly-owned subsidiary of Creative. Cambridge SoundWorks is a leading speaker manufacturer and retailer renowned for its high-performance home speaker systems and critically acclaimed multimedia speakers - namely, MicroWorks™, SoundWorks™ and PCWorks™.
The launch of Graphics Blaster® series of add-on graphics accelerator cards brought high-performance graphics and high quality enhanced video playback to end users at an affordable price.
Sound Blaster AWE64 and Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold were both designed to dramatically increase the audio performance of PCs as well as to bring PC audio standard to the next level.
