The publisher of Prince of Persia and Beyond Good & Evil is getting bigger. Ubisoft announced today that it has acquired French developer Tiwak. The company is a small team of only 17 employees who were (and may still be) developing Tork for Microsoft's Xbox. Tiwak was formerly known as Yeti Interactive, but they have yet to release a game to the market. Members of Tiwak formerly worked at Ubisoft on the highly acclaimed Rayman and Rayman 2 games. Here's the full press release from Ubisoft:

UBISOFT ACQUIRES TIWAK, FRENCH VIDEO GAME DEVELOPER

Ubisoft builds up its selective acquisition policy and strengthens its leadership in internal development.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA - January 12, 2004 - Ubisoft, one of the world's largest video game publishers recently increased the creative potential of its production studios in France by acquiring the independent video game developer Tiwak. This acquisition is operative and has been consolidated since late December 2003.

Tiwak, located in Montpellier, consists of a team of 17 highly talented people who have previously worked on the development, and who have all the necessary skills to produce top-quality games.

"We are very pleased with Tiwak becoming part of the Ubisoft group, as it will give us the means to carry on our work in the world of top-quality video games creation," said President and CEO of Tiwak, Yann Le Tensorer. Nowadays, creating hits requires considerable resources, which Tiwak is no longer able to gather. We truly believe that by joining the Ubisoft group, this will allow Tiwak to reach a higher level in terms of quantity and quality, thanks to the expertise and the scale of a first rank group."

President and CEO of Ubisoft, Yves Guillemot, added: "I am particularly happy about this acquisition, which fulfils our wishes to expand our production studios. Being enriched with competencies of experts with high creative potentials, Ubisoft will be able to keep on providing its customers with even more innovative and captivating games.