Ubisoft and the Government of Ontario jointly announced the creation of a new studio that would be comprised of approximately 800 employees in the city of Toronto. Article continues below the video.
Ubisoft will spend $500m on the studio, and The Guv will throw in an extra $264m over 10 years. Ubisoft, having created and/or published games like the Prince of Persia series, Assassin's Creed (and its upcoming sequel), a plethora of Tom Clancy games and sequels, and about 40 Rayman Raving Rabbids games will hopefully utilize its Toronto studio to create new intellectual properties. It seems likely, considering that most of the aforementioned game series have been developed by the same internal studios over their various iterations (the home console versions, at least).
An announcement I am looking forward to hopefully hearing is that Ubisoft will do what it did in Montreal and fund new game design and production courses in one/several of the many schools in Toronto. Sure, there are already a few institutions dedicated to such things, but it'd be nice for some of the universities (York, OCAD, UofT, etc) to get a beefed-up program backed by one of the biggest names in the biz. It'd probably take a few years, if it ever happened at all, but that'd definitely be something to be excited about.
Also, I'd like to mention that Toronto, and indeed Ontario, is no slouch when it comes to game development. The province is already home to Electronic Arts (Madden, Dead Space), Rockstar (GTA, Bully), Silicon Knights (Too Human, Eternal Darkness), Koei (Dynasty Warriors, Fatal Intertia), and Digital Extremes (UT2004, Dark Sector), as well as a veritable fudge-ton of indie studios and one-man and two-man operations that are cranking out some seriously rad work. A great place to visit would be www.GameIndex.ca for a list of all the current game developers not only in Ontario, but Canada itself. Never know what you'll find, and if you're looking to make a career in game development for yourself you are definitely not lacking in options.
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