JoWooD Pursues Console Development

Austrian publisher JoWooD Productions today announced it is in talks with development studios to bring its most successful franchises to the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Wii. The company did not reveal which of its brands would be making the leap to current generation consoles, but mentioned the Gothic, SpellForce, Painkiller and Dungeon Lords series as examples of its commercially successful properties. Some of these were acquired when JoWooD bought Canadian publisher DreamCatcher last fall, which represented JoWooD's first major move into the North American market. JoWooD hopes to have the first batch of releases in stores between late 2008 and early 2009. Some of the company's properties have previously appeared on portable systems as well as the last-generation consoles, with People Can Fly's Painkiller receiving a delayed Xbox port under the label of original publisher DreamCatcher, but those past console efforts have only accounted for a small portion of its overall portfolio.