Swordfish gets divided

Another one of the unwanted assets put up for sale as a result of the Activision Blizzard has found a new home. Manchester based Swordfish Studios (Cold Winter) have been picked up by Monumental Games while the larger Birmingham part of Swordfish has been bought up by Codemasters. Monumental a developer of middleware and technical solutions for MMO's see Swordfish Studios' experience with Xbox Live as the chief incentive for the purchase:

"Importantly, the Swordfish team is one of the very few developers worldwide to have fully solved the hugely complex issues involved in running and managing the XLSP (Xbox Live! Server Platform) server environments for online console gaming. This knowledge base will help to consolidate Monumental's position as the market leading online game developer." - Rik Alexander, CEO Monumental Games.

While very little is known about Monumental Games' own projects this bit described their current position in the press release:

"The company is the lead contractor to Cybersports Limited in its development of "Football Superstars", a new MMO concept that launches in the UK next month, and has development contracts with several other international console and online gaming publishers."

Swordfish Studios' in Manchester was up until now working on an unannounced project, while Swordfish Studios in Birmingham are currently finishing off 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand for new publisher THQ (release in January). It is not surprising that Codemasters splashed the cash for the Birmingham studio as they have teamed up for both cricket and rugby titles in the past.

"We are committed to growing our studio operations across multiple facilities and increasing the internal capability of Codemasters' creative resource," said Gavin Cheshire, VP, Codemasters Studios. "There is a strong heritage and a compatible skill set, which has enabled us to fast track growth plans and allows for ease of management. Codemasters has ramped up as a UK games development powerhouse with a scalable support infrastructure that allows for rapid deployment of the highly versatile EGO Engine."