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   Late last week, Eidos announced their intention to open a new development studio, over the sea and far away, right in Canada. Québec. Montreal, more precisely. But don't ask us for the street address, because they guys are barely starting to form a new team there for now. Over the next three years, Eidos hopes to recruit 350 people, who will work on some unannounced next-gen projects. At least intially, setting up the studio and hiring new people will be Stéphane D'Astous' job, who thus becomes the General Manager of Eidos Montreal, after previously working for Ubisoft (poor things, first EA, now Eidos...).

   Eidos Montreal will join an expanding group of internal studios held by Eidos / SCi Games, which so far encompasses Crystal Dynamics, IO Interactive, Pivotal Games and Beautiful Game Studios, as well as their two new studios founded in Europe last year: Eidos Sweden and Eidos Studios Hungary (Mithis Games). This last one recently completed Battlestations: Midway, a game that's still holding its ground on the first place in the UK sales charts.

   Like a certain Eidos exec named Bill Ennis says below, Montreal has become a perfect incubator for the gaming industry, thanks to favourable economic conditions in the area granted by the government to gaming companies, but also thanks to some early investments made by the likes of Ubisoft - whose Montreal studio needs no more introduction (by the way, this month it received another $19 million investment, for expanding with a new digital design and animation studio).
"This is a really exciting time for Eidos, we are actively looking for opportunities to further our drive to become a major force in global videogames publishing. Montreal is the ideal location to open a new studio because of its thriving game development community and favourable economics," said Bill Ennis, Commercial Director, Eidos.    We're patiently waiting to see what they're up to.

UPDATE: Gamasutra has just published an interview with Stéphane D'Astous about Eidos Montreal's next-gen plans.