Turbine Entertainment opens Los Angeles studio

Following the recent announcement that it had secured $18 million in new funding and bought the rights to its Asheron's Call series of massively multiplayer games from Microsoft, developer Turbine Entertainment has opened a new studio in Los Angeles.

The new offices will be headed up by Jason Bell, former vice president at Atari Inc, who will be taking on the role of executive vice president at Turbine as well as overseeing all operations at the LA studio.

The objective of the new studio is to exploit the possibilities of the Asheron's Call franchise in the Asia Pacific market, where the company hopes to launch both Asheron's Call 1 and 2.

The Asian market has proved lucrative for MMORPG titles in the past, with South Korea in particular being a massive market for this type of game - but even the South Korean market is dwarfed by the emerging Chinese MMORPG marketplace. "Even a small percentage of market share in China is a significant win for Turbine," commented Bell.

Turbine is also considering moving some of its products onto console platforms, according to Bell, who also expressed an interest in mobile platforms in a recent interview with US website GameSpot.