Jade Raymond Heads New Ubisoft Toronto Studio

Ubisoft has unveiled its newest studio that will be located in Toronto. It will be headed by Assassin's Creed producer and many gamers' dream girl, Jade Raymond. The core team comes from Ubisoft Montreal and has relocated alongside Raymond in the new studio's location. Raymond said she hoped the team would grow to be 800 strong by 2020 and she had already read 2,000 resumes.

To attract best talent right from the beginning, Ubisoft has decided to let the new team work from the start on triple-A titles. The first of these games developed at Toronto will be the sequel to this year’s Splinter Cell. The new installment will be completely developed in Toronto, only using the technology base from Montreal. Raymond declared that Toronto fitted with the Splinter Cell franchise. There is another project going on at Ubisoft Toronto, but nothing has been revealed yet.

Joining the new team are Maxime Belande, the director of Splinter Cell: Conviction, as creative director, Rima Breka, a veteran of Ubisoft Montreal, to lead the technology department, and Alex Parizeau, who served as the producer of Splinter Cell: Conviction, as the head of production. About this new studio, Parizeau declared, "We have a great opportunity to build a culture of our own; something that reflects me, Max, Rima, Leslie, and Jade, and that's an opportunity that you don't often get in your career and that's what I'm excited about."

Jade Raymond came to Ubisoft Montreal in 2004, after she left Electronic Arts, where she produced The Sims Online. Before that, she worked for Sony, where she contributed to the creation of Sony Online's Research and Development department. At Ubisoft Montreal, she achieved fame with the smash hit Assassin's Creed. In 2009, she was an executive producer for Assassin's Creed 2.