Next Island

Next Island is one of the new planets coming to Entropia Universe.

Next Island LLC

The company owning Next Island is Next Island LLC. The company is currently run by David Post, acting as CEO ^[1], Katlean de Monchy, who will be the official spokesperson, Erik Reynolds handling marketing and developing an iPhone application and Jon Jacobs as Studio Chief.

David Post.

David Post has been involved in multimedia companies before (most noticeably Page America and Cellular Systems), where he managed to make financial funders gain nice profits on their investments. He is also involved as an executive producer in a company called Nextpert News Network, which keeps track of trends in media and showbiz, and which he runs with his wife, Katlean de Monchy.

Katlean de Monchy is a trend and fashion expert, who runs the earlier mentioned Nextpert site. She has often been featured on US television, both local as well as national, and used to run a column in a local New Hampton newspaper.

Erik Lee Reynolds is a PR and media consultant ^[2]. He has previously worked with BigPoint ^[3] and Glyde ^[4]

Jon NEVERDIE Jacobs runs the game production studio of Next Island, NEVERDIE Studio.

FaceBook group for Next Island

Production

Next Island is being developed by Neverdie Studios for the planet partner Next Island LLC. "Next Island will officially launch in May 2009." ^[5]

The domain nextisland.com was registered on the 9th December 2007. ^[6] "Next Island has been in production since August 2008." ^[7] The official press release announcing Next Island was published on the 16th September 2008. ^[8] Furthermore, Next Island was announced at Carolines comedy club in New York City on the 22th September 2008. In September 2008 a statement on the official website www.nextisland.com claimed "Next Island’s revolutionary virtual world will launch later this year."^[9] On the 14th May 2009 Next Island creator and chairman David Post asked for numbers of users of virtual worlds on a public forum ^[10] The planned release was postponed several times considering corresponding statements on several websites. ^[5] Next Island private Beta started in December 2009. ^[11] Open Beta was announced to start in January 2010 together with a call for sign-ups and the promise of free gifts. ^[12] Another (outdated?) Next Island website mentions gifts in the form of a "Free Starter Kit" containing a Next Island Hunting weapon, EGGOO launcher, time travel crystal, golf club, beach outfit and towel. ^[13]

(Game) World

The Next Island website contained a "history" page giving information about the discovery of Next Island but the page does not exist anymore and the history of Next Island might have changed... ^[14] Next Island will introduce three different game worlds respectively game ages as they can be accessed by time travel. Those are the paradisiac islands Tutoro Te and Kupu Wahi, the amazon world 400 BC and the ice age.

Gameplay

Considering the activities listed on the Next Island website ^[15], the list of professions Next Island Interim COO Cindy Cook posted ^[16] and the statements regarding the borders of development ("we cannot code") by Jon Jacobs, head of the developer Neverdie Studios ^[7] suggest that the gameplay will not really differ from what is already known on Planet Calypso.