Burning away the fences

Earlier this week, Ubisoft announced expanding their Montreal offices, that will include a large part of its focus on CGI movies - an investment of $400 million and ramping up the studio to est. 3000 employees by 2013 - 500, of which, will be dedicated to CG development. Yow, dem's some numbers.

Numbers aside, there's not a lot of other details offered up - which only makes sense with a preemptive announcement of this sort. However the basic info is very intriguing - a game dev studio that's building narrative entertainment into its long term objective, while recruiting talent from both sides of the fence.

Quote from the article:

"What we see in the future generation of consoles is they will allow us to play games in real time, which is the equivalent of what you see today in CGI movies," Guillemot said. "We will work and learn all the technology and know-how so that when it's time for the next console launch in five years, we'll be ready for games and movies that are at the right level."

Guillemot said Ubisoft is hiring people from Hollywood and CGI companies so the video game creators can learn how to create these movies.

"We're looking for the best talent interested in movies but also interested in learning more about creating video games as well, so they will not only give things to us, but they'll also learn how interactive entertainment is made," Guillemot said.

Additionally, the article speaks to another point. Ubi looks to be targeting a sweet spot I've made mention of before - consoles. A consistent hardware platform, located in X millions of homes, that can render both interactive and passive entertainment as well as anything in between.

There's nary a mention of Machinima in any of this, but anyone reading this blog can see the writing on the virtual walls. Its definitely tapping in. Animated content is resonating much more strongly within our culture just within the last 20 years - and video games and the internet (and the spaces they share) are only to blame for its acceleration.

I expect more news of these crossovers before 2007 is out.