Ubisoft announced today that they’ve partnered with Lightstorm Entertainment and Fox Interactive to create a new AAA-project based on Avatar for consoles and PC. The Division developer Ubisoft Massive is leading development on the project, which will use the Snowdrop engine.
Very few details were given about the game today (it’s set on Pandora and the Na’vi will be in it), but Ubisoft did say, “Four sequels to Avatar are currently in development, and Lightstorm, Fox Interactive, and Massive are working together to create a game that, along with the films, will continue to expand and deepen in the Avatar universe in exciting and innovative ways.”
Ubisoft Massive has a number of open positions for the Avatar project, including an online programmer, suggesting the game will have an online component. “You will be developing modern AAA Online game features, taking them from a persisted back-end through Snowdrop, our in house developed engine to the user interface,” the job description states. “Working iteratively in tight collaboration with other programmers, game designers and testers; to design feature code architecture to fit multiple platforms and back-end, is a big part of our daily life and how we achieve quality.”
Avatar creator James Cameron said:
What impressed me about Massive were the group’s passion for this project and the power of its Snowdrop engine. I believe Ubisoft’s team at Massive Entertainment are absolutely the right partners to bring the beauty and danger of Pandora to life.
Ubisoft adds that “Cameron and Lightstorm entered this partnership after viewing an early game prototype that the team at Massive created using its proprietary Snowdrop engine.”
In addition to The Division, South Park: The Fractured but Whole, and the Avatar project, the Snowdrop engine is also the lead engine on “a number of other unannounced Ubisoft projects.”
Ubisoft was also behind 2009’s Avatar: The Game.
The second Avatar movie is expected in December 2018.
[Source: Ubisoft Blog, Massive]
