GDC Canada Opens Today

The Game Developers Conference Canada kicked off today at the Vancouver Convention and Exhibition Center (VCEC). Our own Scott Jones is giving a panel there - which I suspect he’ll talk about at some point - and he should be occasionally blogging about other highlights from the event. GDC Canada is a bit more low key than its North American counterpart, which is a good thing, because it means more face time with actual developers, movers and shakers for those fortunate enough to be able to attend.

Building on the success of the Vancouver International Games Summit, GDC Canada is a two day forum for Canadian developers to share knowledge, and engage in sessions with leaders of Canada’s game development community. Don Mattrick, senior vice president, Interactive Entertainment Business, Microsoft, kicked off GDC Canada with a keynote address entitled The Evolution of the Canadian Game Industry: A Conversation with Don Mattrick.

For a full list of all the activities, check out www.gdc-canada.com.

Microsoft Acquires BigPark

Microsoft has purchased BigPark, a game development studio in Vancouver, Canada, according to VentureBeat - just mere days after it was revealed that the company cut 100 jobs from its in-game advertising company Massive. The Vancouver was founded by Don Mattrick (who now heads up Microsoft’s Xbox biz), Wil Mozell, Erik Kiss and Hanno Lemke in 2007. Many of the company’s employees worked for EA Vancouver on such titles as FIFA, NBA Street, and SSX. The company has a headcount of 50 employees.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. The studio will work on an Xbox 360 exclusive title for Microsoft, which we suspect may be revealed at E3 in Los Angeles next month. In the new food chain, Lemke will report directly to Microsoft Games Studios head Phil Spencer, who reports to Mattrick.

If anything today’s news proves that Microsoft has a strategy going forward to take on the Wii and PS3, though its previous studio acquisitions ultimately turned into blood baths: Ensemble Studios, ACES Studios, and FASA Interactive no longer exists, and who knows what the future holds for Rare and Lionhead in the long run. More as it develops, as always.

Ubisoft Buttons Up Action Pants Deal

Slowly, it looks like things might be returning to business as usual for the video game industry. News of new studios and big mergers seems to be replacing news of closures and layoffs. Case in point: Ubisoft announced today that it is expanding its North American presence with the inking of a deal to purchase Vancouver based development studio, Action Pants. This deal marks Ubisoft’s first in-house development studio on the North American West Coast.

“We have been looking closely at Vancouver for some time, as we wished to set up a presence in what is one of the industry’s biggest talent pools,” said Christine Burgess-Quemard, executive director of worldwide production studios at Ubisoft. “The creative talent at Action Pants made the decision an easy one, and we are delighted to both establish ourselves in the region as well as welcome a fantastic group of experienced developers who can start exchanging with our other teams worldwide.”

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EA Cancels Vancouver Studio Plans

As I look at sales data for November, i’d like to say that I share the widely held notion that the interactive entertainment industry is recession proof, but recent activities within the industry give me pause. Take, for example, EA’s decision to cancel its plans to open a new studio in Vancouver. Two days after the company lowered expectations for revenues and earnings in fiscal 2009 and announced some serious belt tightening, the company revealed that it would not go forward with plans to open up a facility in Vancouver that would have housed the studios behind the Need For Speed and FIFA franchises.

“These are challenging times, they’re uncertain times for our industry and across the board,” EA spokesman Colin Macrae told The Globe and Mail newspaper this week. “We continue to be firmly rooted in Vancouver.”

While EA may be firmly rooted in Vancouver, it is cutting an undisclosed amount of jobs in its Canada-based development studios and most assuredly, many of its game products that it planned to work on in 2009. Disappointing sales of games like Mirror’s Edge, Dead Space and other holiday game release probably didn’t help - or its stock sliding to a seven year low.

If there is a lesson here it is a familiar one for other sectors: no company is safe in these very uncertain financial times.