Eutechnyx boss fears the "decimation of the British game development community"

Darren Jobling, business development director at Eutechnyx, has told GI is worried that the UK development community is about to enter it's demise.

"I think we'll see more consolidation between publishers and developers, and more mergers," he said. "I also think we'll see a lot more closures in terms of publisher-owned studios. Some publishers see remote development studios as a drain on their resources and when it comes to cost-cutting, they're usually first in the firing line.

"My worry, though, is that we're going to see the decimation of the British game development community.

Just as the British game publishing industry was hit by a bunch of buyouts and closures in the 1990s, the late 2000s may see the publisher-owned development community being hit every bit as hard."

Newcastle Eutechnyx have been in the industry since The Stone Age. The company has produced a large number of games for Atari 8-bit, Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, Atari ST and Amiga. By the early 90s the Ferrari Challenge development house was also making games for PC and consoles such as the Sega Mega Drive and SNES.

Full interview here.

By Mike Bowden