CFO Blake Jorgensen reveals that Jade Raymond’s Motive Studios are working on a new action focused IP, similar to Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed games.
While speaking at the UBS Global Technology Conference in San Francisco, EA CFO Blake Jorgensen revealed a bit more insight into what newly hired GM, Jade Raymond, is up to at her development house, Motive Studios. After Patrick Soderlund hinted at such a possibility last month, Jorgensen put to rest any potential doubt and confirmed that EA is looking for Raymond’s group to help EA tap into the action genre, similarly to what Ubisoft is doing with many of their franchises, especially Assassin’s Creed.
While also working on a yet-to-be-announced new action IP for EA, Raymond’s team at Motive is also working very closely with Visceral Games on their secretive Star Wars project. While details continue to remain scarce, former Naughty Dog employees such as Amy Hennig joined the team a couple of years ago and continue to develop what many fans hope to be a spiritual successor to the canceled Star Wars 1313 project.
After leaving Ubisoft Toronto in 2014, Raymond took a year off before eventually settling back down in Montreal and creating a new studio with EA. Since founding Motive Studios earlier this year, both Raymond and EA have been secretive about what the studio had been tasked with, only providing a few clues found on the website which describe the studio as working on “incredible action experiences”, “entirely new IP”, and crucially, “more of what players are asking for.”
“We’ve never really operated in the largest genre of gaming, and that’s the action genre. That’s the Assassin’s Creed-style games; more open-world, more single-play versus multiplayer. It’s not been an area that we’ve operated in. We recently hired Jade Raymond, who was behind the Assassin’s Creed franchise for Ubisoft and she will be building an action genre for us through a studio we’re building out in Montreal right now”
Traditionally known for sports games and shooters such as the Battlefield franchise, it’s not surprising to hear that EA snatched up Raymond to help in expanding into the open world action genre. While at Ubisoft, Raymond helped create the Assassin’s Creed franchise, working on the first three games before helping to found Ubisoft Toronto and start development on Splinter Cell Blacklist. EA will also benefit from new IPs as, currently, a smaller indie project called Unravel represents EAs only recent move into new IP territory.
What kind of games are you hoping to see from Visceral and Motive Studios? Would you like to see an Uncharted style Star Wars game from Visceral or something else completely? Lets hear your theories!
Source: GameSpot
