Microsoft makes MGS announcement

Friday 4 May 2007
This month Microsoft will open a UK-based arm of its successful Microsoft Game Studios, a developer collective that includes such headlining outfits as Lionhead, Rare, Bizarre Creations, Real Time Worlds and Remedy. The new MGS office will open next week in Reading, and aim to set up a similarly high-profile group of European devs.

"Europe is obviously very important to our platform efforts and an area where [Microsoft] has a strong history of working with some of the best game industry talent," reckons newly appointed European Microsoft Game Studios general manager Phil Spencer. "I’m very excited about what we’ve accomplished in Europe and I look forward to continuing and strengthening that success by building deeper relationships with the development community here.”

Of course, with Rebellion based just down the road in Oxford, Free Radical up in Nottingham and Pivotal Games across the way in Bath, Microsoft's new European MGS HQ won't have far to look in its quest for quality developers to tap up.

Ben Richardson is a former Staff Writer for Official PlayStation 2 magazine and a former Content Editor of GamesRadar+. In the years since Ben left GR, he has worked as a columnist, communications officer, charity coach, and podcast host – but we still look back to his news stories from time to time, they are a window into a different era of video games.