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EA to Open Montreal Development Studio

by Steven Rodriguez - August 13, 2003, 2:10 pm EDT
Total comments: 1 Source: Press Release

The publishing giant can't be contained to a single language. It's going French-Canadian!

EA CREATES NEW DEVELOPMENT STUDIO IN MONTREAL

East Coast Studio Will Attract Talent for New Game Franchises

Redwood Shores, Calif, August 13, 2003 – Electronic Arts – the world’s leading developer and publisher of interactive entertainment -- today announced an initiative to create a game development studio in Montreal, Quebec. The company is currently researching locations for the new facility and expects that the initial team will be moved in and busy researching new projects by the end of this year.

EA has named veteran developer Alain Tascan, Vice President and Studio General Manager of the new operation. He will lead the search for a new location and for recruiting a development team. Services Imobiliers Terramont Inc – a Cresa Partners Affiliate -- has been retained to assist in the search for a location.

“We’ve had a lot of success growing our studio headquarters in British Columbia,” said EA Worldwide Studio President Don Mattrick. “However we know there are a lot of talented people who prefer to live and work in the Northeast. After considering several cities in the U.S. and Canada, we decided that Montreal offered the best combination of creative talent, technology infrastructure and favorable economics.”

“I’m excited about building a team that will create the next great game franchise for EA,” said General Manager Alain Tascan. “We are now composing a team from people who submit resumes submitted to a special Montreal site on . The staff will grow quickly as we identify projects and begin development.”

“At EA, each of our global studios has a distinctive character based on the games and franchises that are created there,” said EA Executive Vice President Bruce McMillan. “I expect that in time, we could have as many as four major franchises operating out of Montreal.”

On August 6, EA announced that it would move its Los Angeles operation to a new, 250,000 square foot facility in the Playa Del Rey section of that city. EA anticipates hiring an additional 300-500 developers in Los Angeles before the end of the decade.

EA Worldwide Studio Headquarters is in Vancouver, British Columbia. There, two studio locations employ more than 800 developers and produce global best sellers such as FIFA Soccer, NBA Live, SSX, Need for Speed™, NBA Street and Def Jam VENDETTA™.

Talkback

thejipsAugust 14, 2003

I actually read an article in the Journal de Montréal last weekend about how Montreal was becoming a very big city for video game developers.

I realized that the author of the article knew nothing about video games when he said that there were many flourishing companies who had developed several blockbusters and gave a quick list of the developers and their "hits". The only big company listed was Ubi Soft(which does make good games). The rest were ridiculously obscure and/or made terrible games.

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