Jade Raymond, previous head of Ubisoft Montreal, has finally resurfaced. Raymond, who left Ubisoft at the back end of 2014, and was responsible for titles including the multi-million selling Assassin’s Creed series, will now head up a new EA studio in Toronto, Canada.
The studio, named ‘Motive Studios’, already has big ambitions. There’s some not-particularly-surprising news. The studio will use Frostbite. There will be collaboration with Bioware. But, the big news is this: New IP.
The studio website cites ‘Motive will be a creative-driven team, incubating entirely new IP and taking on some amazing projects. The first one is going to be really exciting – we’re going to work on Amy Hennig’s Star Wars game!’
Whether a new Star Wars game truly counts as new IP is certainly debatable, but it could be that Motive is already working on multiple titles for EA. After all, most industry insiders believe the studio has already been working for a number of months, and EA has just chosen this opportunity to announce the move. Either way, EA has some big-hitters in the industry in Hennig and Raymond, so hopefully the investment will pay off for them. Expect to find out more about the new game in the coming months (although we expect not to see much if anything at Gamescom next month).
