Former Assassin’s Creed producer and Ubisoft Toronto managing director Jade Raymond is opening a new studio with EA, the two jointly announced yesterday.

The new studio, named Motive, will be located in Montreal. EA has a strong presence already there with EA Montreal and Bioware Montreal, the latter of which will now share a space with Motive.

Motive will be purposed with creating its own original IP, while also assisting on other projects. Besides launching Motive Studios, Raymond is also taking over leadership of Visceral Games, located in California, while Scott Probst will still act as general manager.  The first project for Raymond and Motive will be to help Amy Hennig at Visceral with her new, still unrevealed Star Wars game.

While it should be interesting to see how Raymond balances her time between Montreal and California, this is a huge coup for EA and we can’t wait to see just what Motive brings to the table for Star Wars and whatever original projects it may cook up.