Back in 1994, a little game development studio was created in Australia. Fast-forward to today, and Tantalus have just announced that they are expanding, opening a new studio in Brisbane. The past decade and a half have seen Tantalus shipping more than thirty titles, spread over most major platforms - with their recent successes including Cars: Mater National, Pony Friends, and the freshly-released Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon, for DS.

There are currently 70 developers knuckling down in their Melbourne studio, working on projects for PSP, DS and Wii - and CEO Tom Crago was faced with the decision: continue growing that operation, or create a new studio, to work alongside the existing office.

Crago explains:

“I like the idea of capping our Melbourne base at around 80 developers. We’re on track to grow to that level by next year, and in Brisbane we’ll endeavor to replicate the model that’s been so successful for us down here. In the first instance, the Brisbane studio will work on a DS title, expanding to two teams by the end of next year.”

The new expansion into Queensland has been under the watchful eye of Tantalus COO, David Giles, who is planning to open the studio doors in December.


Cars: Mater National, Pony Friends, Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon
Giles continues:

“With the help of the Queensland Government we’ve found a terrific location in Kelvin Grove, and feel that the talent pool up there will enable us very quickly to assemble a world class group of developers. In fact, we’ve already made several key hires.”

This announcement from Tantalus coincides with the launch of this year's annual Australian game developers' conference - Game Connect Asia Pacific (GCAP), which is being run in Brisbane this week. Stick around, we've got Timmy on the scene, and he'll have plenty of coverage for you about what's going on in Australia from the developer side of things.