October 16th, 2008 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Companies & M&A | No Comments »
Following the news that Gameloft topped the quality rankings of MobileGamesDB on Mobile Entertainment Magazine, we noticed a comment on the post that hinted on the Sao Paulo studio closing down. Of course we started looking into the subject.
Not too long after the comment, we found more proof on the Internet and in our mailbox that the Sao Paulo studio has indeed closed down on October 14th. This while Gameloft was still hiring staff two weeks before.
Sao Paulo is not the first studio that is removed from the company’s portfolio. A few months ago, Gameloft sold it’s India studio to Ubisoft.
Needless to say, selling off studios will mean that production capacity will slim down. We currently have no idea how many studios are out there, but at some point the publisher might find itself outsourcing work to other developers just like all other big publishers.
