Deals are going every which way in the game industry lately. First up: the French have made a deal with the French! Which is to say, game company Ubisoft is acquiring Hybride Technologies, an 80-employee Quebec-based company that develops special effects tools for movies, TV and advertising. Ubisoft isn't any stranger to Canada, though (or 26 other countries), where it employs 1,000 people in Montreal.

Hybride is no small-time group either: they've worked on Frank Miller's Sin City, 300, and the Spy Kids series. Ubisoft hasn't said how much it'll pay for the company, but did state it expects to initially generate $10-11 million in sales (in the first fiscal year, presumably).

"The future of our industry depends on our ability to create brands that captivate audiences and to extend those brands to other forms of entertainment," says Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot. "The acquisition of Hybride falls directly into the strategy that has already led us to open a digital creation studio in Montreal and to acquire the Tom Clancy brand for video games and ancillary products."

He's also confident they'll maintain "one of the best 3-D animation studios in the entertainment industry."

Next is Rare, who aren't going the acquisition route, but parterning with Audiokinetic Inc., a "leading audio solution provider for the video game industry". Rare Ltd will use the company's "award-winning audio pipeline solution", which is called "Wwise" for several upcoming titles. Rare conducted a thorough evaluation process and decided to replace the proprietary audio tech its used in the past with Wwise. A wise decision, sounds like, oh ho ho!

“Wwise offers an unmatched feature set, yet it is still a very intuitive solution,” says Robin Beanland, Head of Music, Rare Ltd. “Day after day, we realize that Wwise has got absolutely everything we need: real-time auditioning, advanced profiling capabilities, a comprehensive interactive music feature set, etc. It’s all there and totally straight forward.”

 “One of our projects developed with Wwise has a very short development cycle. Since day 1, the Audiokinetic team has been amazing in supporting us, making sure that no time is wasted. They’re as dedicated to our project as we are, and it is very comforting to know that we have an extra team of 25 people to rely on.”