14 DAY TRIAL // Romanian-based companies are not among the biggest game developers in the world, but it seems that things are about to change since game giants Electronic Arts have decided to open a brand new game development studio in Bucharest. Still, EA are not the first to make such an important decision, since there is already an Ubisoft subsidiary that worked for some hit titles, among which the Silent Hunter franchise. EA also have a mobile game development company based in Romania.
Following this announcement, Romania becomes the first ever country in the Eastern and Central Europe to have an Electronic Arts subsidiary and people already have high hopes from the newly launched studio since their little brothers - the mobile games development studio - have worked for hit games such as Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix, Medal of Honor or Need For Speed Carbon. Still, no projects have been announced yet.
"Romania becomes the only country in the Eastern and Central Europe where Electronic Arts has a gaming development studio for video and computer games", said EA Romania Enabling Technologies director, Viorel Alex Marinescu.
Also, Electronic Arts started a funding campaign for the Polytechnic University of Bucharest last year and Romanian students can now learn all there is to know about the gaming development in their home country. The company plans to have about 320 employees by the end of the year and the total sum to be invested by EA is estimated at $5 million.
The new game studio will develop games for the next-gen consoles, as well as PC systems. As we said, there are no hints about the titles to be developed, but we definitely hope for some brand new IPs and not some old sequels ending with double digit numbers. Anyway, stay tuned and we'll keep you up to date.