James North-Hearn becomes Foundation 9 CEO

Foundation 9 Entertainment founder Jon Goldman has left his post as CEO of the ‘superdeveloper’, with the firm’s European boss James North-Hearn stepping up to replace him.

According to a report on Next-Gen, Goldman has moved on after successfully establishing the company, which in time has grown to include US studios The Collective, Backbone, Amaze, Digital Eclipse, Pipeworks and Shiny.

In August last year, Foundation 9 acquired Sumo Digital – the Sheffield, UK-based studio founded by North-Hearn in 2003.

North-Hearn briefly laid out his strategy for the company, saying: "When I worked with Infogrames and also with Gremlin, I was very studio-oriented. The first thing I want to do is spend some time with all of our studios, just to try to understand how they all tick, what we’ve actually got. I really want to get to their level and really understand what the studios’ aspirations are, what their qualities are, and what their issues are, where they are failing.

"We don’t want to just remain competitive. We want to be more competitive.

"Our plan now is to hone ourselves into a really, really high quality developer on all platforms."

The firm recently put in place a series of measures designed to improve the product quality across the board at all its studios.

Added North-Hearn: "What I’m going to do is tune the company and evolve it along with the industry, rather than make dynamic, massive changes."