First, let me thank you for giving us the opportunity to appear before you today and briefly talk about this industry, which has really evolved over time. I will do the first part of my presentation in French and the second part in English.
My name is Martin Carrier. I am a proud resident of Longueuil, near Montreal. Today I am representing Warner Brothers Games Montréal. Let me give you an overview of our company.
You are familiar with our name because of our movies. Everybody has certainly seen Batman this summer, which was a blockbuster for us. We also have major television productions. Just think of shows like The Big Bang Theory, Ellen and The Voice—in which I will never star, I can assure you—and many other series that people often watch on TV around the world.
Warner Brothers has been in Canada since 1930. So we have been around in Canada for many years, not quite as long in Montreal. Our presence generates economic spinoffs of more than $500 million, if we count film and television productions. There are many productions in Vancouver and Toronto. We also have the major brands that you are familiar with, like Harry Potter and DC Comics, and they are part of our family. We are very proud to have a strong presence in Canada.
Historically, we have produced many films and TV shows, but since 2005, we have decided to embark on the production of video games. Why have we made that decision? In the past, we often granted gaming licenses to companies that were here, either Ubisoft or Electronic Arts, to make games with Harry Potter or The Lord of the Rings, for example. In 2005, we decided to create our own video games subsidiary to be able to better produce our games. They were very well done in the past, but we wanted our employees to be involved in the production of games.
As a result, the subsidiary was created in 2005. In 2008, Martin Tremblay, a Canadian based in Burbank, near Los Angeles, California, was appointed head of the subsidiary. Since then, we have grown tremendously and we have acquired a number of studios around the world. I am thinking of those in Seattle or Boston, for example, with a company called Turbine that makes online games called MMOs. We hired people from the former Midway Chicago that made Mortal Kombat. We have also worked a great deal with a company in England called Rocksteady Studios Ltd. that has developed wonderful Batman games, as well as a company called TT Games that develops Lego games. So Warner Brothers has the license to develop all the Lego company's video games. It is a great success. We are talking about more than 80 million games sold, which is a lot.
We are very proud of the quality of our games and we strongly believe in this industry.
Why are we in Canada and why have we set up a studio in Montreal? I hope that these meetings will help you discover that Canada has some of the most talented video game developers in the world. Montreal has become a hub for this industry.
I have personally worked in the industry since 1997. Back in the day, I used to work with my colleague Luc at Ubisoft. In 2010, Martin Tremblay and I decided to create a new video game studio in Montreal.
Under Martin Tremblay's guidance, in 2010 we decided to create a whole new video game development studio in Montreal and to start from scratch. Basically it was a brand new operation that we decided to start, because we knew, and history had told us, that there was great talent and great opportunity for video game development in Montreal. We can look back at the influence the National Film Board had in terms of the animation industry in Canada. That was a real spark for our industry, which eventually grew to people who developed 3-D software, people from Softimage and so on.
Coupled with great universities, great artistic talent, and great creative talent, especially in Montreal, an industry grew out of that. From 1997 on, there has been a groundswell of activity in the video game development sector. We knew that Montreal was a great place in which to develop games. First we looked all around the world, from Florida to China. We looked at different cities all around the world, but we decided to set our sights on Montreal.
On June 1, 2010, we started our studio in Montreal. I'm very proud to say that today over 250 people work in our Montreal studio. We've had explosive growth in our studio. The most talented folks in the video game industry are working with us in our studio in Montreal, but also in other studios across the country.
Our main activity in Montreal is the development of games, of course. We work with some of the great licences from Warner Brothers, including those from the DC Entertainment family, the superheroes: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and so on. We have two main sectors of development in Montreal. There are what we call triple-A games, which are our major sort of tent-pole types of developments which have sizable budgets that are in the tens of millions of dollars, in the area of $30 million to $50 million. We also have online games. They are free to play and are accessible online. Eventually they will be accessible on mobile devices.
Our first game was produced in Montreal in what we call the beta phase, which is accessible to everybody. It is called Cartoon Universe, which is entering the world of Looney Tunes: Bugs Bunny and Friends and Scooby-Doo, which is another evergreen for us and for kids. I'm also happy to say that our first console game will be coming out with the new Nintendo console, the Wii U, which is coming out on November 18, and we have a Batman game, Batman: Arkham City Armored Edition. That's going to be coming out in October.
In a nutshell, this is a booming industry in the world, but also in Canada and certainly in Montreal. These are people who are involved in the arts. Many artists work with us. Many designers develop the plot and progressions. As you know, video games have a series of challenges. Sometimes you have to save the princess, but there is more to it than that. There may be many interesting challenges and progressions. Now people frequently play online. So video games entail art, design and also a very strong technological aspect.
We have many computer scientists and engineers. They are highly educated people. It is always exciting to see our creative people and our Cartesian people work together to create products that are exported worldwide.
We must be thoroughly proud of the fact that products that are created in Canada are exported everywhere. We are really selling millions of units. These products showcase the talent of young Canadians, whether at the artistic or musical level, because, as you know, our games have soundtracks. That is really something. If there is one point that I would like to stress today, it is that we are really talking about cultural products. We hire people who are creative, both artistically and technologically. They will push the limits of the products to turn them into some of the most sophisticated products in terms of Internet connection or multi-player functions. These are highly sophisticated products.
In our case, our presence in Canada has been a success so far. This is what we also want for our products. This means that talented people will want to move to Canada. Today, we are able to look for talented people around the world. We also hope that it will be easier for us to bring those talented people here.
When I graduated from university in the 1990s, there was talk of a brain drain. Now it is the opposite, at least in our industry. It is very positive for us.
Once again, thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak before your committee. I will now give the floor to my colleagues.