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Ubisoft has $1.2 billion acquisition war chest
Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot, speaking with Les Echos, says the publisher has a $1.2 billion war chest for spending on acquisitions. The executive states the company needs to grow rapidly to keep pace with publishers like EA (which may, or may not, acquire Take-Two) and the other 800 lbs. gorilla on the block, Activision Blizzard.Guillemot says acquisition isn't the only way Ubisoft is growing. The company is getting involved in films and licensing, along with opening up new studios and pushing into Asia. He also states that the company will begin working on CG movies, starting with mini films based on its franchises at first, and then moving on to feature films. Hopefully, any Ubi-produced CG film will fare better than Square's Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within.[Via GameDaily, Develop]
Ubi's yearly sales up 36% on Rainbow Six Vegas 2, Assassin's Creed
Money continues to pour into the House that Rayman built as Ubisoft announced fourth quarter sales growth of 10% to €217 million ($339 million). In addition, the company saw its wallet grow by an impressive 36.4% over the entire fiscal year ended March 31, 2008 by some €928 million ($1.45 billion) driven by "stronger than expected" sales of Rainbow Six Vegas 2 (nearly two million units sold), Assassin's Creed (more than six million units sold), and titles from its casual "Games For Everyone" brands.Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot called 2007-08 a "remarkable year" thanks to "excellent sales" of established brands and a "steady output of new releases...that have performed exceptionally well." Ubisoft also continues to work towards a sales target of €1 billion, or $1.42 billion, for 2008-09, while the exec set the bar high for his company going forward with an expected growth of "at least 15 percent" in the coming year.Lastly, Guillemot boasted of a "particularly strong" line-up of titles in the year ahead, including seven existing franchises, five new releases, and a continued focus on bringing more casual games on the Wii and DS, one of which we think should be based solely around counting money.
GDC08: Gameloft's Guillemot discusses mobile industry hang-ups
In the opening keynote of the Game Developers Conference mobile component (being the section dedicated to gaming on cell phones, not some wheeled stage rolling down the hills of San Francisco), Gameloft president and CEO Michel Guillemot tackled supposed "myths" surrounding the mobile gaming sector, drawing attention to several issues currently inhibiting the industry's growth. "It's not the stagnant, tiny market that some people predicted it to be," he noted in his "Fast Life, Fast Media" presentation. He insisted that the perceived slowdown in the market was only temporary and not too dissimilar from that seen in the rest of the industry towards the end of a console cycle.With various handsets expected to be in the hands of 4 billion people by 2010, one of the market's primary challenges lies in distribution through the multitudes of mobile carriers. Problems listed by Guillemot include non-standardized data costs across various characters (i.e. how much does it cost to transfer the data to your phone?), as well as the sheer number of SKUs that accompany each game release. If Gameloft produces 5 games per month, with compatible versions for 1,000 handsets in 10 different languages, it ultimately releases 50,000 different SKUs. Despite the considerably quantity of releases, Guillemot insisted that quality must be uniform across all SKUs -- "as perfect as possible," because a consumer is unlikely to try the same game on different handsets. The iPhone was singled out as a handset that, at least in its current form, actually has a negative impact on the mobile gaming industry. Since the phone doesn't support any games yet, Guillemot considers every additional iPhone consumer to be a loss in the mobile gaming audience as a whole. Still, he predicts that touch-screen gaming, coupled with advanced handsets and the standardization of distribution costs, will lead to a new growth spurt for the mobile gaming industry in the latter half of 2008.
Ubisoft goes Game 3.0 with user-generated game content
Sounds like someone from Ubisoft was taking notes when Phil Harrison laid out his vision for Game 3.0 at this year's Game Developer's Conference. Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot (pronounced John Smith) told an enthralled (and eager to create) audience at the Edinburgh Interactive Festival that the French developer has a "top secret" game in development that focuses on user-generated content. Guillemot said they would need to provide the tools for gamers to port their creations across platforms, sending our pie-in-the-sky meter off the charts. We're already sketching out a game scenario heavy on lolcats, lonely girls, and lazy Sundays that old timers would be completely and comically incapable of understanding. Unfortunately, Ubisoft has done their homework and plans on creating an online mentoring system (ostensibly for all of their games) to reward experienced gamers for assisting noobs (look it up, gramps). In exchange, they'll be rewarded with "points or free games," two things that notably won't pay the rent.
Ubisoft CEO plans for the casual future
Ubisoft's Yves Guillemot sees a dramatic increase in the size of the video game market in the near future, driven by the influx of new customers. Since a lot of these new customers are casual gamers getting into the mobile, PC, and, of course, DS and Wii platforms, Guillemot believes that his company must make games other than Tom Clancy's X (for example.)He outlined Ubisoft's strategy in three parts: "triple-A blockbusters" for hardcore gamers, more casual fare for families, and user-generated content. Maybe that last one explains who designed their Imagine series covers.We hope that this means that equal effort is being put into all of these approaches. Casual games aren't going to help a company if they're shoddily put together on a minimal budget.[via Next-Gen]
Ubisoft CEO Guillemot dismisses E3 as 'only for the US'
Ubisoft's CEO Yves Guillemot is on fire! Last week he just flat out says the PS3 costs too much and now he dismisses E3 (Min-E3, get the name right Guillemot) as "only for the US." Guillemot made the statement at the Ubidays event in Paris during a kick-off Q&A session.This doesn't mean Ubisoft is pulling out of Min-E3, 'cause you know they still have to deal with those pesky Americans and their money. Guillemot was just saying, "E3 is now only for the US, so we wanted to do something to help everybody see our products ... So we decided to do E3 but in France and call it Ubidays." You know, E3 ... in France ... with one company.We don't mock though because who knows how Min-E3 will play out? The international press used to be at E3 in full force. Who knows if they'll find it worthwhile if the companies are starting to do stuff like this and come to them? What we do know is that despite there being no E3, it's still genetically built into the companies to do something during this time. Ubisoft is doing this Ubidays, Sony just had their event, Microsoft announced Halo 3's date and Nintendo is doing their thing right now. There may not be "E3," but that doesn't stop the information from flowing in May.
Ubisoft wants to eat most of the next-gen cake
Ubisoft was third largest publisher of games in Europe last year. Fifth in the US. CEO Yves Guillemot has decided that being number two in Europe would be keen, so he's decided to expand. He's already aquired Reflections, makers of the Driver series. Assassin's Creed is hotly anticipated. Guillemot's secret to market semi-domination? "I think it's our investment in the next-gen consoles. We invest more in the next-gen consoles than our competitors so we will create better quality games." A moderately sound assumption.What does Ubisoft want to create? RPG's, of course. The best kind of game, right? ...Right? So what was the reason for purchasing Microsoft Game Studio's sports section, and for EA buying a fifth of Ubisoft's stocks? No real big sports titles are being announced, but the role-playing world is on the mind of Ubisoft. Guillemot says: "the RPG segment is really very close to the action-adventure segment where we are, so we think we can get in there quite quickly." Some may disagree, depending on the type of RPG created. What does everyone think? Can Ubisoft really take a foot in the door of RPG-land, with Squeenix taking up most room and Atlus covering the niche titles? Nippon-Ichi has made a dent, but where could Ubisoft fit in?
