Ubisoft has big plans for its new Toronto based studio, including more than half a billion dollars in funding and hundreds of staff.
Assassin’s Creed producer and managing director of Ubisoft’s new Toronto office Jade Raymond says that the studio will focus on nothing but triple A titles, with plans to eventually work on five at once.
Ubisoft Toronto opened last year, and while Raymond doesn’t want to get ahead of herself, she believed that it would naturally tempt developers to it. She said that Ubisoft Toronto had the same kind of appeal as a start-up, but that the risk was greatly reduced as it already had experienced staff and was fully backed by Ubisoft. Raymond said that the studio was already working on two major projects at the moment – one of which is a new Splinter Cell game – and would take on more as it grew.
Ubisoft plans to eventually pump half a billion Canadian dollars into the studio, with the Canadian government supplying an additional quarter of a billion dollars of funding over ten years as part of a deal between it and the publisher.
Raymond said that having multiple studios was vital for any developer these days as the way that games were being made was changing. “Games are growing into huge-scale triple-A projects,” she said. “If you look at any big brand like GTA, the games are being done across multiple studios and multiple teams.” She admitted, however, that a studio on the scale planned for Ubisoft Toronto was going to be a logistical challenge, saying that it would require careful management to make sure it all held together.
Source: Develop
