Ubisoft has rebooted development on much-delayed title I Am Alive – and is now creating the game with the Splinter Cell engine.

CVG reported this week that the title had been delayed again, and would now not see the light of day until 2011 at the earliest.
Clarifying the reason for the delay, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot said:
"We have totally re-engineered I Am Alive. It’s still on the way, it’s going to use the Splinter Cell engine.

"We have amortized all the costs that were incurred with the previous developer.
"Everything we do is fresh now on that product and we think it can be very good quality, but it’s not going to come this financial year."

I Am Alive – a Jade Raymond pet project – was originally developed by Darkworks, but CVG understands that the project was then moved to Ubisoft Shanghai.
According to this latest news, that shift involved more of a ‘complete restart’ than a ‘bit of spit and polish’.

After months in the dark, Jade Raymond Watch is officially back on, as the lovely Ubisoft Toronto head this week appears in ’shopping and style’ mag Lucky for a chat.

The charming exec – who’s earned CVG at least one ASBO in the Canada area – appeared in the magazine’s ‘How I’m Wired’ columns to discuss her favourite gadgets. And before you ask, yes, they took new photos as well.

After a childhood spent obsessing over Atari and Nintendo, Jade Raymond made a career choice – video game executive – that seemed a natural fit," the mag reads. "At the entertainment software company Ubisoft, she produces the bestselling Assassin’s Creed series and oversees a team of hundreds of engineers, programmers, and 3-D animators.

[…]

Check out the rest of the article and see images from the magazine at CVG.

Here we are looking at the ten women that influenced the gaming industry in a big way over the last ten years. This isn’t an all-inclusive list and I’d love for you to join in the conversation by including your nominees in the comments. The game industry is starting to see change and some of it is due to the women on this list paving the path. Here in random order, are ten women that really changed the game industry over the last ten years.

[...]

Jade Raymond was the producer on Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed. While she had been a producer on previous titles including The Sims Online, Jade definitely had to put up with controversy from men that couldn’t get over her looks. Yes guys, it is possible to be gorgeous and talented. Her official website says that she now works with Electric Playground and we hope to continue to see great things from Jade.

[...]

Read the rest at GamingAngels.

Ubisoft’s new Toronto studio, scheduled to open in the first quarter of 2010, will end up costing about $800.0 million Canadian, $263.0 million of which was subsidized by the Province of Ontario.

The Ontario Technology Corridor now claims to employ some 272,000 people across 6,700 companies; figures that prompted the Canadian Province to boast in a press release that it “wants Europe to know that the Ontario Technology Corridor is unique in the world for its depth of talent and serious government commitment to the digital entertainment industry.”

Ontario also recently donated $10.0 million to the University of Waterloo and $9.0 million to the Ontario College of Art & Design in a bid to fund digital-media based programs and improve campus infrastructures.

The Toronto Ubisoft studio, to be headed up by Assassin’s Creed producer Jade Raymond, is expected to create 800 additional jobs in the Province over the next ten years.

But hey, we know you’re worried about Yannis Mallat, CEO of both Ubisoft Montreal and Ubisoft Toronto, who told us last month that he would be "handling both" studios. Well, don’t fret – Ubisoft’s press release says that while "Raymond will oversee day-to-day operations of the Toronto studio’s work on video game project," she will do so "under the governance of Yannis Mallat." Ubisoft Toronto is scheduled to open its doors by the end of the year and begin "work on AAA games and new intellectual properties," according to Raymond.

Update: More details at Gamasutra.

Ubisoft has revealed that mysterious survival game I Am Alive will be released by the end of March.

That brings the launch forward from spring (Q2), which strikes us as bizarre, as we’ve heard next to nothing about the PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 game so far. But Ubisoft was adamant Q1 2009 was the date when contacted this morning.

I Am Alive is being made by Cold Fear developer Darkworks, and takes place after a terrible earthquake in Chicago, where those left alive struggle to survive. Oh, and Jade Raymond is definitely not working on the game.

Source

Back when we first got word of I Am Alive, a new disaster game from Ubisoft, the popular gossip was that the title would feature Jade Raymond (of Assassin’s Creed fame) as producer. Since then, Ubisoft hasn’t provided much info aside from the debut trailer above, but we’ve finally got new details courtesy of the cover story from the latest issue of GamesTM. And as it turns out, Raymond isn’t as involved with the title as the rumor mill led us to believe.

In the article, developer Darkworks (best known for last gen’s so-so survival horror game Cold Fear) reveals that Jade Raymond isn’t working on I Am Alive at all, and the team actually has no idea how that rumor got started. In Raymond’s rumored place stands senior producer Alexis Goddard, who seems most enthusiastic about how the project draws on other sources:

Source