Another big studio, apparently closing!

[xinstantnoodlez]

mchaza said:

non-gravity said:
Is the Australian government changing something fiscally or are all these Australian studios just incompetent?

Add Team Bondi to the 3 in the OP

Heres the deal, first off i need to mention how all these studios that have closed even opened in Australia. Back in the early 2000s Australia was a Hot spot for Games Developement for 2 reasons: first was the Australian Dollar was weak, it was going for every 1 USD would return 2 australian dollars. The second was the employees, the Publishers in the US saw australia as the perfect Sweat shop for games development, not only would they be able to pump games out at half the cost there were talented people that could pump out high quality work as well as had a strong work ethic compared to say outsoucing to India or south east asia. So publishers like THQ to EA opened Australian arms to capitize on the situation. 

Now come this year and the last few years, the Australian dollar is now stronger than the US dollar, so THQ and many other publishers like EA started closing down there Australian arms because they were no longer able to produce cheap licenced games or just cheap games anymore. There is no government support for games development here in Australia either which doesn't help.

Also this EA studio is a Support studio, set up to capitalize on the Australian dollar, much like Irrational Games Canberra(2K Marin) and Creative Assemby Australia (now Sega Studios Australia) were. So the Main Viseral games studio location in Califonia isn't closing just there now not cheap australian arm. 

what he said ^^^