Kuju operates five UK-based studios: Headstrong Games (House of the Dead: Overkill for SEGA), NiK NaK (games for kids), doublesix (Burn Zombie Burn), Kuju Manila (Wii mini-games), Zoe Mode (CRUSH for SEGA) and Chemistry (Unreal Engine games). If this rumor is true, however, Kuju now operates four.

According to Chemistry's website, "Chemistry is a game development studio building on the foundations of decades of experience and now making amazing products on the next-gen toolset, Unreal Engine 3.... The studio operates within Kuju's stated strategy of making its studios more autonomous to support greater creativity, to allow greater focus in each studio and to enable faster growth across the group."

Back in January, Kuju began reducing the company headcount — though, only a "small number" at Chemistry seemed to be at risk. The last game we heard Chemistry was working on was a World War I first-person-shooter called To End All Wars. The game was slated for late 2008, but was not released.

We have contacted Kuju for a comment regarding this story.

Zoë Mode, the Kuju Entertainment subsidiary perhaps best known for Sony's SingStar series, is making the move to San Francisco next month with the June 1st launch of Zoë Mode San Francisco. The new studio will be led by co-studio heads Sarah Stocker and Mark Danks. Both Sarah and Mark have a history at Sony, with Sarah a former senior producer for Sony's Studio 5 and Mark a senior manager of developer relations. Along with Sarah's Glu mobile and Mark's EA experience, both w3orked together a Stormfront Studios as well, so they should have no trouble at all running the new Zoë Mode offshoot.

Those seeking a job in music game development in the San Francisco area would be well-advised to drop a line to sfjobs@zoemode.com. We expect big things, or at least relatively sizable musical things.

Kavanagh joins Paramount from developer Kuju after spearheading their expansion into North America with Kuju America. Before that he served as the VP of product development at Eidos, where he worked on titles such as Hitman, Timesplitters, Deus Ex, and Thief. John will be directly responsible for development and licensing of video games based off of Paramount properties.

“We are very excited to have someone as experienced as John come aboard to lead our video game group,” states Thomas Lesinski. “John brings a diverse array of global gaming experience that will help accelerate our efforts in the development and licensing of video games.”

With such an impressive list of credits, can better movie adaptations be far behind? Probably, yes.

"We want to become the best, the go-to place, the studio that is known for carving out our own part of the industry. Double Six is going to be the place to go for the absolutely best games on digital platforms"

Kuju targets digital downloads with new Double Six studio {GamesIndustry.biz]

We've created Zo Mode; she is the personality that reflects our in-house philosophy of accessible, fun gaming for everyone."

Zo Mode

From today Kuju's Brighton studio is reborn as Zo Mode.

Zo Mode's Studio Head Ed Daly elaborates, "This studio has had great success over the last three years focusing on fresh gaming experiences for new audiences. We've shipped several very successful, high quality titles and grown to 100 staff and now the time is right to rename the studio. We've created Zo Mode; she is the personality that reflects our in-house philosophy of accessible, fun gaming for everyone."

Since setting up in 2003 the teams from Zo Mode have worked on EyeToy : Play 3, EyeToy : Play Sports, SingStar : Rocks, SingStar :Anthems & SingStar : Legends, all in collaboration with Sony London Studio.

Ed Daly continues, "Zo allows us to have some fun with the image of the studio but of course what matters most is the games we make. We have built up a great team, a really diverse crowd for a game developer, and an internal culture that reflects the fun and creative values that come through in our games. By taking control of the public face of the studio we will be able to reinforce this unique identity and specialist expertise further."

Zo Mode remains a part of Kuju Studios which continues to provide corporate support, and opportunities to share technology and collaborate with the other Kuju studios.

Although very different to the party games developed with Sony, the first title to be released under the new name will be CRUSH , recently announced by SEGA Europe Ltd, another fresh and original title from the studio now known as Zo Mode. www.zoemode.com

The upcoming train game Rail Simulator will be the first game to exploit Philips' amBX technology, which is a system of LED lights, rumble peripherals, heat and fans. In short, it turns your room into a giant rumble pack. The press release says:

By amBX-enabling the game, all the familiar sights, sounds and feelings of the railway experience will be recreated around the player, including wind, track rumble and lighting - both in and out of the tunnels. Signals, tracks, points, buffers and the experience of driving in the cab will come to life through the energy of amBX locomoting the world of the simulated railway out into the real world.

If this sim can also recreate the odor of salarymen hair tonic, the irritating jabber of schoolgirls on cell phones and the warm feeling of being rubbing up against people whose only human contact comes from rush hour train rides, I will buy this. If not, no thanks. Brian Ashcraft

More Here [Guardian Games Blog]

GamesIndustry announced today that British developer Kuju Entertainment are the ones working on LucasArts' new music-based puzzler "Traxion":

Called Traxion, the new game consists of a wide variety of music-based mini-games, and will come pre-loaded with music from several leading artists - but one of the key features of the title is that it will also work with music loaded onto Memory Sticks by individual gamers.

Making this the first PSP game that I'm aware of to use memory stick-loaded mp3s in any appreciable sense. Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories made a misguided effort to do so with their snidely proprietary Rockstar mp3 importer. More of a pain in the ass than a feature, that thing. Eliza Gauger

More [GamesIndustry]