Annapurna, an independent media production company best known for producing award-winning video games and films, is forming an in-house game development studio to create its own projects.
The company already operates a publishing business started back in 2016 under the name Annapurna Interactive, and it’s responsible for helping fund and market some of the most beloved indie games of the last decade. Those include What Remains of Edith Finch, Kentucky Route Zero, and Outer Wilds, among many others.
Annapurna Pictures, the film side of the company, is even more well known, earning countless Academy Award nominations and wins for films it has co-produced like Her, American Hustle, and Zero Dark Thirty. Now, Annapurna wants to make its own games with an all-new internal studio.
“We’ve had the immense honor of working with some of the most talented independent game creators in the world,” Annapurna Interactive president Nathan Gary said in a statement. “Many of us came from an internal development background and are excited to make this a part of Annapurna Interactive moving forward. We can’t wait to share more about what’s to come — anything is possible.” The new studio will be based is Los Angeles, and Annapurna is currently hiring for a new unnamed project with openings for game director and senior producer.
The shift represents a telling trend in game development, where it’s sometimes more financially viable to produce projects in-house, instead of funding outside ones for a cut of profits, and market them to the variety of platforms available across consoles, PC, mobile, and now cloud gaming and subscription services. Though what kind of games Annapurna intends to create is still a mystery, and it looks like it may not take the wraps off its first project for some time.