Ubisoft has started a brand new company named Vantage Studios which is the result of the publisher’s collaboration with Chinese Internet-giant Tencent, and the new studio will be taking the helm of several iconic franchises such as Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry and Rainbow Six. This means all new games from the three franchises will now be developed by the new studio which “will have full autonomy on the creative direction and business plans” of these longrunning series’. According to Ubisoft, the formation of Vantage Studios is the first step towards their plan of moving forward in the industry:
“Vantage Studios will take on development and expansion of these brands, building on the foundation of Ubisoft’s experience and expertise, sharing services and technical resources, all while giving developers more hands-on control over the games they are building.”
“The goal of Vantage Studios, and future creative houses, is to facilitate stronger and deeper connections between developers and players. This streamlined approach allows for both a higher level of autonomy for developers and a shorter pathway between gathering and implementing player feedback, while still offering the benefit of Ubisoft’s expertise, services, tools, and tech.”
Vantage Studios is the first of several Creative Houses currently being made by Ubisoft to handle all of their long running franchises from now on and there will also be other companies that will be making the rest of the IP’s from the publisher. The new studio constitutes of 2,300 employees across multiple Ubisoft game development teams such as Montreal Quebec, Sherbrooke, Saguenay, Sofia, and Barcelona. Also, Vantage Studios will be run by Christophe Derennes and Charlie Guillemot, with the former having worked under Ubisoft for over 35 years in total.
The new studios taking the reign of Ubisoft’s franchises will help the developers work in a far more cohesive and streamlined manner, which would be more effective for the individual titles than it has been in the past, at least in theory. While this new move from Ubisoft definitely seems ambitious and thoughtful, only time will tell how it actually turns out for the games themselves.
