Ubisoft buys Michael Jackson Experience dev Longtail Studios

Ubisoft has purchased Longtail Studios, the firm working on Michael Jackson: The Experience.

According to a report over on GI.biz, 48 employees of the Quebec studio were transferred over to the Quebec offices of Ubisoft, with five or six workers rumored to have been let go.

"The Longtail team has already completed several important projects for Ubisoft," the publisher Canadian paper Le Soleil. "This initiative will allow Ubisoft Quebec to acquire additional expertise, as well as talented and experienced developers who participated in the development of key Kinect projects including Michael Jackson: The Experience. "

Longtail's three other studios and its NYC corporate offices are unaffected, but those in the Quebec office made up about half of the total employees in the company.

A spokesperson for Longtail said it will start hiring folks for its Halifax branch so development can start speeding up once more on other projects.

MJ: The Experience is slated for release on Wii, DS, and PSP November 25, while the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions were delayed into 2011.