Electronic Arts has launched a studio in Singapore to localize and customize popular EA games into at least five different languages for distribution throughout the Asia region. Based in the heart of the city at No 1, Fifth Ave #04-07 Guthrie House, the studio is poised to evolve into an online game development facility. A development team is already in place and the first localized projects have already started to be shipped.
VP operations, Asia, Irene Chua will manage the development studio, which has a development team of 20 international staff from Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Holland. EA veteran Chris Thompson, vp/gm of EA Southeast Asia will also be based in Singapore to oversee EA's publishing business. Chris comes to Singapore from Tokyo where he was gm of EA Japan for seven years.
"We are happy that Electronic Arts has chosen Singapore to establish their primary localization studio in Asia," said Teo Ming Kian, chairman, Economic Development Board in Singapore. "In addition, EA will also be able to utilize the studio for online game development. EA is the latest addition of top tier digital media companies that EDB has attracted to Singapore over the past 18 months. It is a significant boost to our efforts in building Singapore into a Digital Media Capital, where Singapore creations can be made for global consumption."
"We are excited to build a team that will customize and localize EA's games for the pan-Asian market," said Jon Niermann, president, EA Asia Publishing. "Singapore offers everything we need to build a world-class creative organization. The Economic Development Board has been very supportive and we are looking forward to working closely with them to build a positive local presence."
Electronic Arts (www.ea.com), headquartered in Redwood City, California, is a world-leading interactive entertainment software company. Founded in 1982, the company develops, publishes and distributes interactive software worldwide for videogame systems, personal computers and the Internet. Electronic Arts markets its products under four brand names: EA SPORTS, EA, EA SPORTS BIG and POGO. In fiscal 2005, EA posted revenues of $3.1 billion and had 31 titles that sold more than one million copies.
