Gameshastra, India's largest game services provider has revealed to the press today that it has signed a Master Game Development Agreement with Freeze Tag. The latter is a California-based casual game publisher and developer. Basically, the agreement will see Gameshastra developing Etch A Sketch, a new game inspired by the classic toy from The Ohio Art Company, while Freeze Tag will be publishing the game for PC and Mac, for now.

Yes, for now, because, under the terms of the agreement, Gameshastra will also develop any future versions for platforms such as the Xbox 360 and Wii, if they decide to go with the two consoles as well. There are no plans for this at the moment, or at least they're not saying anything.

"We have worked with many offshore developers, and Game Shastra is the first company that has truly 'exported' US game development expertise and management to its offshore operation, while still maintaining a US onshore staff in key developer roles. Gameshastra's talented and experienced management team and competitive pricing were attractive features, but the main reason we picked Gameshastra to develop our high-value licenses was simply the opportunity to work with a really great game development team," said Craig Holland, CEO of Freeze Tag.

As for Prakash Ahuja, CEO, of Gameshastra, he reckons that "...Freeze Tag as a publisher has great vision for identifying good titles. It has chosen some very exciting and unique licenses that we hope to develop jointly under this partnership. This agreement with Freeze Tag reiterates our position as a leading global game services provider for both Core and Casual games."

Gameshastra provides a very flexible project environment for their customers, as far as game development is concerned, as well as game art and game testing in a single location, "which is very difficult to pull off on-shore, besides offering competitive development costs leading to shorter development timelines and higher quality products," says Bjorn Book-Larsson, CTO and VP of Game Development, Gameshastra. "Our presence in Los Angeles provides quick response to our customers, and keeps us tightly integrated throughout the entire project."

Let's hope we see nothing but the best PC and console additions from the pair, as they seem to be getting along quite well. Well, so did Sony and Immersion and look what happened to them.