With the announcement of its better-than-expected sales from Rainbow Six Vegas 2 and Assassins Creed along with the purchase of the rights to the Tom Clancy franchise, which will see a number of releases in the near future, Ubisoft has recently made its strong presence in the gaming industry not only seen, but felt.

Adding to its momentum is the announcement that it has successfully negotiated an agreement with Gameloft to acquire its development studio in Pune, India.

“Following on the recent announcement of our new Singapore studio, this acquisition will reinforce Ubisoft’s presence in Asia and the southeast region in particular,” stated Christine Burgess-Quémard, executive director, worldwide studios at Ubisoft. “India has a promising future in the videogame industry and this is an opportunity for us to establish ourselves in the country.”

The studio, which was established in 2006, is home to 120 developers and tester who will initially focus on porting titles to handheld devices (mobile phones) and reinforce Ubisoft’s testing teams. Ubisoft hopes to be 200 developers strong within 12 months and plans to eventually grow the team to 500 people. An easy enough task considering Pune’s university system graduates 80 000 engineers each year.

The financial details of the deal weren’t mentioned along with any names of titles that the studio will be developing.

Unfortunately, until North America’s mobile phone technology catches up with that of Asia, no one really cares about mobile gaming.






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