"Gameshastra" plans USD 20 mn investment

Hyderabad, Feb 21: "Gameshastra", a game development services provider, has launched an advanced game services facility in India for Global Game publishers and developers.

The 25,000-square feet facility located in here will house highly-skilled project teams that will focus on providing full range of game development, game art animation and QA services for Console, PC, Online and Mobile game platforms.

The facility was inaugurated by Worldwide Studios Activision Publishing Inc Senior Vice-President Brian Ward. Activision announced that it is looking forward to work closely with "Gameshastra" on some of its exciting forthcoming projects.

''The creation of the Game Services facility in India is an important step for complementing Game Publishers strategy to partner with highly talented Game Services providers in order to meet increasing demand for new products and features. It allows Publishers to focus on new product research while taking full advantage of "Gameshastra" end-to-end game services capabilities,'' he said.

"Gameshastra" extends functionality, Game play, and Certification testing on console, mobile, handheld and online platforms. The company also offers hardware compatibility testing to assure that its customer's applications work with most common hardware available today. The company plans to invest over USD five million in the facility and will invest another USD 20 million over the next two years. The company plans to reach a headcount of over 1000 people in the coming 18 months.

The Console Game Market is the fastest growing business opportunity for Game Publishers. ''Game Publishers continuously publish and bring new experiences within the game industry, taking players to a whole new level of play,'' Chief Executive Officer Prakash Ahuja said. Gameshastra's high quality game services capability and state-of-the-art infrastructure in Hyderabad will enable both the performance and flexibility that is critical to meet a game publishers rising creative challenges and first-to-market demands.'' Gameshastra's Director Mohan Bhupatiraju, who was instrumental in setting up the facility and responsibile for Infrastructure and Facility Management for all its locations, said the newest facility was a fully-certified testing facility incorporating advanced game testing and debugging tools and has highly skilled gaming and testing experts with real-time testing experience on all of the latest game consoles, including the Nintendo WII, Playstation 3 and the Xbox 360.

''The testing facility also incorporates some of the world's most demanding security systems,'' he said.

UNI