In a press release issued earlier today, Age of Conan developer Funcom announced it's expanding its offices to Montréal, Canada. The new Montréal location will serve as a new development studio, aimed at working on both existing and in-development Funcom properties. Several of the company's current employees will be moving to work at the new location.

"Montréal has established itself as one of the world’s most important locations for video game production, and we are looking forward to taking part in that success,” says Funcom CEO Trond Arne Aas, in the press release. “In addition to strengthening our North American presence, the new studio will take advantage of the great incentive programs offered by the Québec region, incentives that makes Montréal one of the most cost effective locations in the world for developing MMO games. This will in turn allow us to better balance our costs, making it possible for us to continue to expand our investments into the MMO segment.”

Although it's not a move that warrants too much speculation about the game developer's current industry strength, it does lead the casual observer to believe that Funcom is still going strong and looking towards the future. Recently, Funcom announced the first expansion for its Age of Conan MMO, Rise of the Godslayer, at GamesCom. Check out our interview from the expo here, and click past the jump to read the full press release.

Funcom establishes new development studio in Montréal

– New MMO games studio strengthens Funcom’s presence in North America –

Durham, USA – September 1st, 2009 – Funcom is pleased to announce the establishment of a new development studio in Montréal, Canada, where it will build a strong and competent development team that will work on several games in the Funcom portfolio. Besides tapping into the excellent talent pool available in the region, Funcom will also move a certain number of key personnel over to the new studio.

“Montréal has established itself as one of the world’s most important locations for video game production, and we are looking forward to taking part in that success,” says Funcom CEO Trond Arne Aas. “In addition to strengthening our North American presence, the new studio will take advantage of the great incentive programs offered by the Québec region, incentives that makes Montréal one of the most cost effective locations in the world for developing MMO games. This will in turn allow us to better balance our costs, making it possible for us to continue to expand our investments into the MMO segment.”

Funcom is one of the most multi-cultural game developers in the business, with over 320 employees from all corners of the world employed at the company’s offices in Norway, the US, China, and Switzerland. The company is responsible for the best-selling MMO ‘Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures’ that shipped over 1.2 million copies to retail in 2008, as well as the pioneering sci-fi MMO ‘Anarchy Online’. The company has developed more than 20 titles since its founding in 1993; including the critically acclaimed ‘The Longest Journey’ and ‘Dreamfall’ adventure games. Funcom is currently working on the expansion pack for ‘Age of Conan’ called ‘Rise of the Godslayer’ as well as its new MMO ‘The Secret World’. Developers at the Montréal studio will play an important role in the development of both of these games.

“It has been a pleasure for us to work with Investissement Québec in setting up our Montréal studio and we are very thankful for the strong support they have given us throughout this process,” says Ole Schreiner, CEO of Funcom’s new Montréal studio. “We are excited about the opportunity that Montréal represents to our company, not only because of the great incentives offered by Québec, but also the authorities’ strong commitment to training qualified video games personnel and building a video games cluster in Montreal and Quebec.”