Two heavyweights in the interactive entertainment space (and some high profile friends) have teamed to create a new development studio based out of Honolulu, Hawaii. The new company, Avatar Reality, was founded by former front-men for the Tetris Company and Square. The company's first project will be an online virtual game world that Rogers says will be fun, romantic, creative and imaginative. That first project is called Terraformed Mars. The company announced last week during GDC that it would license Crytek's CryEngine 2 to create this virtual world.

Henk Rogers has a pretty impressive resume that includes founder such companies as Blue Planet Software, Blue Lava, and The Tetris Company o- the company that is credited with bringing Tetris to Nintendo's GameBoy. Kazuyuki Hashimoto offers a equally impressive resume - he's a former vice president of technology at Electronic Arts and was the chief technical officer of Square, where he oversaw CG development of such titles as Final Fantasy VII and the Final Fantasy film. Other heavyweights lending legitimacy to this venture are board members Alexey Pajitnov (the creator of Tetris), and former Nintendo of America president Minoru Arakawa. Thanks Gamasutra .