Ubisoft Reflections

History

Martin Edmondson started developing games for the BBC Micro with Nicholas Chamberlain in 1984. Their first game was a Paperboy clone called Paper-Round that took two years to develop but was never released. While working on that game, they started Ravenskull which would be their first published game, released in 1986 by Superior Software. This was followed by Codename: Droid and an Acorn Electron conversion of Stryker's Run in 1987.

The name Reflections was first used for their 1989 hit Amiga game, Shadow of the Beast, published by Psygnosis which spawned two sequels. The original Amiga game was partially written by Paul Howarth, and started out life as a parallax test of the blitter of the Amiga's Agnus chip; Paul later went on to work for Deep Red Games, a UK video game company based in Milton Keynes. A number of other Amiga and Atari ST games followed including Ballistix (1989), Awesome (1990) and Brian the Lion (1994).

In 1995, they became known for Destruction Derby, which was critically acclaimed for its realistic physics and destruction, which later become Reflections' specialty. Due to the success, the game had four more sequels over the years. In 1999, Reflections became well known for the game Driver, which was inspired by '70s cop shows like Starsky and Hutch and movies like Bullitt and The Driver. It has been followed by four sequels and four spin-offs. The company incorporated as Ever 1016 Ltd. on 14 April 1998, and changed its name to Reflections Interactive Ltd. on 22 May 1998.

Their original logo was designed to complement the Psygnosis owl, so that they would look good together on the back of game cases. Their current logo is a written "R" which is then rotated and mirrored, thus reflecting upon their name, "Reflections".

In 2004, studio founder Martin Edmondson left Reflections after the concepting stage of Driver: Parallel Lines, and sued Atari due to "constructive unfair dismissal as a result of Reflections alleged repudiatory breach of a contract of employment that necessitated Mr. Edmondson's resignation." Martin's brother, Gareth Edmondson, took his place as the studio manager. In July 2006, Atari announced that it had transferred all of the staff and most of the assets of Reflections Interactive Limited, including the intellectual property and technology rights to the Driver series, to Ubisoft for $24 million.

Reflections Interactive was formally moved to a newly registered company, Mundays (797) Ltd., on 19 April 2006, which changed its name to Ubisoft Entertainment Ltd., trading as Ubisoft Reflections, on 23 May 2006, and to Ubisoft Reflections Ltd. on 6 March 2012. The first Reflections game after becoming a Ubisoft studio, was Driver 76, released in 2007.

Martin Edmondson returned to Reflections as a consultant for the duration of the development of Driver: San Francisco, released in September 2011.

Gareth Edmondson, studio manager, left Reflections after more than a ten-year presence at the studio in November 2011, two months after the launch of Driver: San Francisco. The studio is now headed by Pauline Jacquey.

Reflections is working on multiple console formats, including the PlayStation Vita, Wii U and Kinect.

May 2013, Ubisoft Reflections announced that they are working on a new game, Ubisoft planned to announce the game at E3 2013. On 10 June, during Ubisoft's press conference it was revealed that Reflections are working with developer Ivory Tower on a new racing game called The Crew, The Crew was released in December 2014.

As of June 2016, the studio is working on Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands and Grow Up.