Throughout 2018, Ubisoft has been expanding quite a bit. They’ve acquired Blue Mammoth Games, developer of Brawlhalla, while also establishing new studios in Mumbai, India, and Odesa, Ukraine. Today, they revealed that they will be opening up one more studio this fall in Winnipeg.
For those of you who don’t know, Winnipeg is the capital of the Manitoba province in Canada. This will be the fifth Canadian Ubisoft studio following Montreal, Quebec City, Saguenay, and Toronto. Ubisoft plans on creating 100 new jobs within the studio over five years, and will even invest $35 million CAD into the province over the same time span. Ubisoft believes there is a lot of untapped potential for game development in the area, and is one of the first big studios to expand there.
When it comes to games, Ubisoft Winnipeg will work with the other Ubisoft Canadian studios as a AAA co-development team, with its focus being on crafting the development tools and tech for other teams to use, with the Assassin’s Creed, Watch_Dogs, and Far Cry IPs specifically being mentioned.
Yannis Mallat, CEO of the Ubisoft Canadian Studios, had the following to say about opening up Ubisoft Winnipeg:
“The mandate for the Ubisoft Winnipeg studio is important and will directly support many of our most successful, world-renowned brands, such as Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, and Watch_Dogs – all games that are based on an open world and systemic gameplay approach.
The creation of these massive digital world is increasingly complex, and it’s critical that our development teams have access to the best tech and tools to continue to develop the most innovative games in our fast paced, highly competitive market.”
To celebrate this announcement, Ubisoft also released a new video to promote the studio that features gameplay from various Ubisoft titles, including the upcoming Starlink: Battle for Atlas. You can check that video out below.