SEPT. 16, 2007 • Ubisoft opened a new game development studio in Chengdu, Sichuan, which will be headed up by Richard Tsao, formerly a senior producer at Ubisoft’s Shanghai studio – Ubisoft’s second-largest development team. Ubisoft Chengdu will at first focus on other Ubisoft titles before creating its own online titles for PC, consoles and handhelds. The new studio will start with 10 team members, with plans to grow to 200 developers during the next 12 months.
Impact: Ubisoft has been in China longer than any Western game publisher. They first opened an office in Shanghai in 1996 and it grew to over 250 employees. They helped bring Sony Online Entertainment’s EverQuest MMOG to China and they have localized hundreds of games to China. However, so far this has had little impact on overall corporate revenue. Nevertheless, China is a game-playing nation and as such they may start to become a development powerhouse in terms of delivering products the rest of the world wants to play.
