Ubisoft to open studio in Toronto

This story is a few days old now, but I just wanted to share a few thoughts.

So it was announced this week that French-based company Ubisoft will be opening up a studio in Toronto by year’s end. This new major studio will finally put Toronto (and Ontario for that matter) on a more equal level as Vancouver and Montreal. Vancouver has long had EA as its major development studio centrepiece, and Montreal has its own Ubisoft studio.

The reason this announcement is important is that this new Toronto studio will eventually employ about 800 people. Even though the greater Toronto area does have offices of other well-known companies like Rockstar, Activision, and Capcom – these offices only employ on average 100 people and mostly work on small projects, or are only marketing or sales offices.

This new Ubisoft studio will be employing 800 actual game developers within 10 years. This will allow talented Ontario developers to stay in the province and not have to move away to get big-studio experience. And as has happened in Vancouver and Montreal, in time Toronto will also probably see an increase in independent game studios - both as a result of former Ubisofters and its related talent pool, and because of the Ontario government’s commitment to the video games industry.

The Ontario government will be investing about $250 million over 10 years, with Ubisoft itself investing $500 million. Part of the overall plan in setting up Ubisoft Toronto, in addition to stimulating the Ontario economy, is to use Toronto’s already strong film industry talent, and build on that to expand into other entertainment mediums.

As a whole, the new Ubisoft Toronto studio announcement is a very postive thing indeed.

CanDevs