Shares in Eidos Plc soared yesterday on news that it has won a non-exclusive technology licensing agreement from Oracle Corp, which has bought a license to Eidos’s Software Codec video compression technology and gets the right to incorporate the technology in a wide range of products. The shares in the company, which has been buying games developers to broaden its base, leaped 75 pence to 813 pence at the opening. The agreement does not preclude Eidos from licensing the technology to other companies on an OEM or value-added reseller basis. The company declined to comment on the value of the deal. Eidos claims that it is reaching the point where an entire movie can be compressed so that it fits onto today’s CD-ROMs, and can be played back at about VHS quality.
