WildTangent Promotes Mike Peronto to CEO, Alex St. John to Remain Chairman
WildTangent, Inc., one of the largest online game publishers in the U.S., announced today it has promoted Mike Peronto to CEO. Peronto has been with the company since 2002 as its president and chief operating officer.
As chairman, WildTangent founder Alex St. John will continue to be active in his efforts to evangelize the company as well as the PC gaming platform to analysts, media, investors and customers. The change in roles is a natural outgrowth of WildTangent’s recent worldwide expansion. In January of 2008, WildTangent opened offices in London and Singapore as it expanded its gaming offering around the globe.
“My role is the same as it has been for the last year,” said St. John. “With my increased worldwide travel, Peronto has essentially been the chief executive of this company for quite some time and it just made sense for the board to formally recognize that.”
Peronto has more than 20 years of experience managing technology companies. Prior to WildTangent, Peronto was vice president of Publishing Products at Adobe Systems and the chief operating officer at WatchGuard Technologies, Inc., an Internet security firm. He also held the chief executive officer position at Endura Software Corp., a provider of supply chain management software and at Viathan Corp., a provider of data storage software. He started his career as a Marketing Representative for IBM. Peronto received his M.B.A. degree in Marketing from the University of Washington and his B.A. degree from UCLA.
Prior to founding WildTangent in 1998, St. John was responsible for the development of Microsoft Corp.’s multimedia strategy. St. John was one of the principal creators of Microsoft’s DirectX technology, which became the foundation for all Windows multimedia applications, 3D graphics, media players, as well as PC and Xbox games. St. John’s achievements while at Microsoft are described in several books including: “Renegades of the Empire” by Michael Drummond; “Opening the Xbox” by Dean Takahashi; and, “Masters of Doom” by David Kushner. St. John is widely considered a visionary in the gaming industry. He is a monthly columnist for Computer Power User Magazine and a frequent speaker at major media and technology events.
About Wild Tangent
WildTangent is the fastest growing online game property in the world with more than 30 million unique monthly gamers, offering more than 500 of the most popular online and downloadable games from the world’s top developers and publishers including its own WildTangent Game Studios which publishes Polar Pool, Polar Bowler, Penguins, Fate and many more.
The WildTangent Orb(TM) console ships directly on the desktops of leading PC manufacturers including Lenovo, Emachines, Gateway, HP and Toshiba, giving it a huge global footprint of connected game playing consumers.
WildTangent offers gamers the opportunity to purchase premium games outright, pay per session with WildCoins(TM), or engage with advertising to play for free. Advertisers include 20th Century FOX, Warner Brothers, Paramount, EA, Sony Playstation, Nintendo, Toyota, Honda, P&G, Unilever, Clorox and many others.
For more information visit www.wildtangent.com
SOURCE: WildTangent