Ubisoft has announced the opening of a new video game development studio in Chengdu, Sichuan, China. Richard Tsao, senior producer at Ubisoft’s Shanghai studio, has been appointed managing director of the new studio. Ubisoft Chengdu will initially focus on internal outsourcing and in time will be responsible for developing online titles for PC, consoles and handhelds.

The opening of the new studio was celebrated yesterday at a signing ceremony with Yves Guillemot, chief executive officer of Ubisoft, as well as the Party Secretary of Chengdu Hi-Tech Zone, Mr. Jing Gang and Mr. Han Chun Lin, Director of Chengdu's Hi-Tech Zone.

Following on its history of success in China, with Ubisoft's Shanghai studio already the second-largest Ubisoft development team in the world, the new studio in Chengdu will open its doors in Tianfu Software Park with 10 team members and the goal of expanding to 200 developers over the next year. Chengdu, with over 35,000 software programming graduates per year, is one of the most technologically developed cities in Western China, offering long-term growth opportunities based on a talented and highly educated local population. With its cutting-edge infrastructure and a local Hi-Tech Zone, Chengdu attracts international companies from all over the world and will provide a perfect environment for Ubisoft to establish an outstanding development studio.

"The success of our studio in Shanghai, which has been further confirmed with the launch of Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 for the PLAYSTATION 3 system, has encouraged us to extend our growth in China,"said Christine Burgess-Quémard, executive director, Worldwide Studios at Ubisoft. "We are convinced that Chengdu offers the perfect environment for our expansion, offering a great number of highly educated and talented people."

Richard Tsao's career in games development began at Microsoft, where he helped to ship games such as Dungeon Siege and Mech Warrior 4. He then moved to Crytek, shipping Far Cry and managing pre-production for Crysis before coming to Ubisoft Shanghai where he was most recently responsible for projects including Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 for the PS3. Before video games, Tsao gathered a decade of development experience as a technical project manager and programmer for various client/server software projects, including deploying the first online billing system for MSN Internet access service.