Ubisoft takeover of Hybride

"We've set ourselves a goal of creating angrossing, extended game experiences for our audiences. That means taking our game properties and extending them to other media, including television, film books and more"

- Rob Cooper, Managing Director,Ubisoft UK

October 08's 3D World Magazine reported on Ubisoft's acquisition of Canadian based effects company, Hybride. Hybride are best known for their effects on both 2006's 300, and 2005's Sin City, comic book adaptions. Such an acquisition would make sense as VFX of film and gaming begin to naturally merge. There's a quote from Jenkins' 'Convergence Culture' about how in the shooting of The Matrix sequels,

"Perry's team logged four months of motion capture work with Jada Pinkett Smith, the actress who plays Niobe, and other member of The Matrix cast. All the movements and gestures were created by actual performers working on the set and were seen as extensions of their characterisations."

- David Perry, Electronic Arts.

This studio synergy "allowed them to import thousands of 'assets' from the film production into the game". 

I've taken particular interest in this as it could set up an ideal business structure for developing tight-knit transmedia storytelling opportunities. This seamless connection between computer game and film media can help create a ubiquitous franchise, reaching out to a particular fan-base or general public alike.