Outsource Bulgaria

Ubisoft has announced it’s going to double its internaltional team from 1,600 to more than 3,000 developers.

Ubisoft Bulgaria has been founded in 2004 after the success the company had with its Romanian subsidiary. The small Bulgarian studio has already released one game in Ubisoft’s signature Rayman series.

Here’s what the corporate info page states about outsourcing their production studios. 

The company’s 15 in-house production studios are located in 11 countries. The choice of China, Canada and Romania as host countries for its major studios offers Ubisoft competent, trained people as well as tax benefits or a lower cost structure.

I think they’ve pretty much summed up the benefits of outsourcing (see italics). This isn’t to say this is the only viable model. At the other extreme, Blizzard Entertainment has focused solely on it’s US-based development studio (working secretly on Diablo 3 / Starcraft 2) and a marketing organization sprawling the world.