BioWare Opens New Studio In Montreal

BioWare has announced the opening of a new studio in Montreal that’s being launched to help with the development of Mass Effect 2.

The new team will work in the existing EA Montreal facilities, BioWare co-founder Ray Muzyka told GameDaily, and will employ about 30 people. About half the staff in the new location, many of them Mass Effect veterans, will be transfered from BioWare’s Edmonton studio, while the remainder will be new hires.

“We’re really excited about it, and we think it’s going to be a huge opportunity to tap into the talent base in Montreal while supplementing our existing teams in Edmonton and Austin, which are doing some great stuff on all the other projects BioWare’s working on,” Muzyka said. “The growth we’re seeing in Montreal is aligned with what [EA CEO] John Riccitiello laid out as the goals; we’re still investing in innovations and new IPs that EA’s going to support.”

BioWare already has a full plate with Mass Effect 2, Dragon Age: Origins and Star Wars: The Old Republic, but Muzyka also claimed the studio has a couple of “super secret projects” in the works that will be revealed in the future. He added that Mass Effect 2 would hopefully be ready for release in the first quarter of 2010, but did not say whether a PlayStation 3 version of the game would be released along with the Xbox 360 and PC editions.