It was already on life support, but THQ just shut down its two big Australian studios. Following on from Krome earlier in the year, Australia quite literally only has Team Bondi left. And rumour is that Team Bondi is about to be acquired by an animation, not games development, studio.
It's sad because when it comes to casual games, Australia has some amazing studios - Firemint, Halfbrick. We have some amazing, talended developers and creatives over here, but it has become so damn expensive to make games here. A few years ago, the Australian dollar traded at $0.60 to the American dollar. It was cheap for American companies to set up studios here and pay employees.
Now the Australian dollar is worth more than American dollar. The cost of making a game here has increased by some 40 per cent. So as a result, all those game developers are being shut down and people are losing jobs
I feel sorry for everyone being let go, it must be hard as to find a gig where they can use their skills now. Really disappointing considering some of their recent success' as well...
Hey I almost bought that Jimmy Neutron game used recently. Now I regret deciding against it. Anyway, that's really sad, especially Blue Tongue as the de Blob games were excellent and two of the few good third-party Wii games. Also thought Krome's Force Unleashed on Wii was decent.
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Topic: The Australian games development industry is dead :(
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