CCP Newcastle Opens, Working On Dust 514

While it has been recruiting for it for some time, Iceland-headquartered EVE Online developer and publisher CCP has officially announced the opening of its fourth studio, CCP Newcastle, which is working on upcoming console MMO first-person shooter Dust 514. The North East England studio is collaborating with CCP Asia in Shanghai for Dust 514 -- the publisher's first ever game for home consoles and not PC -- and also aims to provide assistance with lighting, physics, and artificial intelligence to CCP's future, currently unannounced console projects. CCP Newcastle's founding engineers, such as its technical director Richard Smith, hail from Midway Games. The EVE Online company notes its Midway veterans have a particular expertise with Unreal Engine, which Dust 514 is built on. It also claims the MMOFPS is the first console title using UE3 to feature fully dynamic lighting. Dust 514 mixes first-person shooter and real-time strategy elements in a persistent virtual world set within the EVE Online universe. Commanders and ground infantry work together in the game using "real-time configurable modular weapons and vehicles to adapt to and control dynamic battlefield conditions." Battles in Dust 514 also affect events in EVE Online, potentially determining who controls different planets in the online PC game. CCP has not yet set a firm release date for Dust 514 or specified which current generation systems the title will appear on. "The decision to establish a UK studio was an easy one for CCP," says Smith, formerly technical director at Midway Games "The North East has a distinguished heritage of game development, an experienced console-development talent pool and local universities producing exceptional graduates." He adds, "We have been able to assemble a world-class team of console developers with unparalleled Unreal Engine expertise and integrate them with CCP's global organization."