GameDaily BIZ just got off the phone with EA's vp of communications, Jeff Brown, and BioWare co-founder and CEO Ray Muzyka, who revealed that BioWare is establishing a new BioWare Montreal group to work within the existing EA Montreal studio. Muzyka said that the team will be working on the highly anticipated Mass Effect sequel to start with. That said, Mass Effect 2 is still very much a dual effort at both Edmonton and Montreal.

Muzyka noted that the goal is to have around 30 people in Montreal and about half of the staff will be people brought in from BioWare's Edmonton studio location (many of these folks worked on Mass Effect), with the other half consisting of new hires from the great talent pool in the Montreal area. Those interested in applying should head over to careers.bioware.com.

"We're really excited about it, and we think it's going to be a huge opportunity to tap into the talent base in Montreal while supplementing our existing teams in Edmonton and Austin, which are doing some great stuff on all the other projects BioWare's working on," Muzyka said. "The growth we're seeing in Montreal is aligned with what [EA CEO] John Riccitiello laid out as the goals; we're still investing in innovations and new IPs that EA's going to support."

Muzyka added that in addition to Mass Effect 2, Dragon Age, and Star Wars: The Old Republic, BioWare has a couple "super secret projects" that they'll be able to talk about at a later date.

BioWare is hoping to release Mass Effect 2 during EA's fourth fiscal quarter, which means Q1 of calendar 2010. It's still not known at this point whether the game will be brought to PS3 in addition to Xbox 360 and PC. Muzyka would not confirm platforms, but he promised that an announcement on the matter would be coming from BioWare soon.