Michel Ancel has revealed he has gone ahead and formed an independent studio, but will continue to work with Ubi.
The new studio is called Wild Sheep and will be an initiative of Ancel’s, on top of the work he is doing at Ubisoft Montpelier. He did not share details on any games the studio will be making, but we are sure we will be hearing about them soon enough.
Ubisoft’s statement essentially confirmed that Ancel, and Ubi, is working on a sequel to Beyond Good and Evil, as one of the projects he is working on. We don’t know more details than this, but we can hope Ubi has been prodded to speed up talking about this.
I wonder if Ancel will be able to shuffle his two roles. Fresh in my mind is what happened with John Carmack, who sought to work with both id Software and Oculus VR. Unfortunately, he is now stuck in a lawsuit between the two, involving the nature of his work on VR in between the two companies.
Perhaps Ancel would be best served seeking out an arrangement like Masahiro Sakurai’s. While Sakurai has technically separated with Nintendo and HAL Laboratory to form his own studio, Sora Ltd., he continues to be closely associated with Nintendo, with only Meteos being his only title to be published outside of their platforms. Like Sakurai, Ancel could break with Ubi completely and arrange for them to hire him on individual projects. A temporary subsidiary like Project Sora would not be a bad idea either.
Stay tuned to GameRanx for the latest news on Beyond Good and Evil 2. Image is from a vertical slice of Beyond Good and Evil 2.
