EA buys more of Ubisoft

[Doctor Setebos]

In REAL shareholder news (thanks for the heart attack, Gorvi), it looks as though Electronic Arts has successfully snatched up even more shares of Ubisoft (http://wii.ign.com/articles/811/811467p1.html), giving them a total 25% voting shares in the company.

Uh, oh?

[Zaro]

http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b45/Gaia_Zaro/Games/Rayman-Raving-Rabbids-4.gif

[Nura]

But... ubi makes / publishes good games? that's not a good match imo.

[lockwoodx]

http://img77.imageshack.us/img77/169/5gduvlcj5lzqqvhsjqqtlytkq2.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

[CaptStu]

I wish MS would buy Ubisoft.

[bKangy]

Ubisoft no longer french? GOOD!!!


Yeah because the French haven't created some of the greatest artworks ever at all. :rolleyes:

EA in controll of WoW? BAD!!!

Um, ok.


In other news, this is disgusting. Refer to my sig.

[Chaos Machine]

Ubisoft no longer french? GOOD!!!

EA in controll of WoW? BAD!!!

WoW is owned by Vivendi, the parent company of Blizzard.

[lockwoodx]

WoW is owned by vivendi, the parent company of blizzard.

Ugg your right. My total bad I'm out of touch. I edited my post to reflect my mistake.

If I had any photoshop skill at all I'd edit the burger king logo on his crown to say EA.

[YoungAlCapone]

Bad news, all around bad news.

[Chaos Machine]

Really I think that EA is encroaching monopolistic levels of dominance in the games industry, especially if they acquired ubisoft. I would really love to see EA get broken up.

[Flatpicker]

Meh.
Ubisoft is making money for EA. They won't touch the formula there.
This just allows them to get a bigger chunk of the earnings.

[51|RandoM]

If you put EA and Ubisoft in a lineup of corporate entities I wouldn't be able to tell the difference between the two of them.

[KingGorilla]

So umm, at what point did the yearly expansions, sometimes less than 10 months between sequels, re-using the engines, charging for content already on the disc, not give off the vibe that these two companies are eerily similar regardless of any purchases?

[Venkman]

Ubisoft still puts out plenty of licensed bad games. It just so happens they follow that with some real gems.

[Doctor Setebos]

If you put EA and Ubisoft in a lineup of corporate entities I wouldn't be able to tell the difference between the two of them.While I understand what you mean, I have to think that Ubisoft has a much better quality/crap ratio than EA.

[Deadend]

So umm, at what point did the yearly expansions, sometimes less than 10 months between sequels, re-using the engines, charging for content already on the disc, not give off the vibe that these two companies are eerily similar regardless of any purchases?
EA does it with sports games.
Ubi does it with shooting games.

[tombofsoldier]

Shit, why the hell aren't the Canadian or US governments stopping this? They'll obviously form a monopoly. I guess EA is bribing enough officials to get them too look the other way.

[hideouslywrinkled]

So umm, at what point did the yearly expansions, sometimes less than 10 months between sequels, re-using the engines, charging for content already on the disc, not give off the vibe that these two companies are eerily similar regardless of any purchases?

Amen. I used to think it would be bad if EA bought Ubisoft. But now it seems like that might give Ubi the capital to support more original titles. And, if not, it will just be business as usual with about 9 Tom Clancy games released per fiscal year.

[wezlypipz]

Could someone please propose a monopoly suit!

[Soap]

EA does it with sports games.
Ubi does it with shooting games.

Looks at Battlefield Series (published by EA) and Command and Conquer series. I think EA screws over more genres than just sports.

[Stormwatcher]

Holy crap, that was a lot of fucking stupid comments.

Since when making lots of games is automatically synonym with making BAD games? All Splinter Cell games are really good, the 1st and 3rd Prince of Persia games are REALLY GOOD, they made Beyond Good and Evil, many great Rainbow Six games (granted, Lockdown sucked hard), GRAW and GRAW2, Rayman, Raving Rabidds...

Not to mention upcoming games like Assassin's Creed.

Ubi may have made a few bad games (like Red Steel), but the high amount of top notch titles they developed and published more than compensates for that.

And Soap, WTF has C&C to do with the whole "they maek gaems every year lol" bullshit? It's been a long time between Generals and Tiberian Sun, and they're both awesome games.

[Shjinta]

Man I have a interview with ubisoft Friday. Better not mention any of this. Honestly my friend works at EA... yeah... I don't think he's seen a day off in the last two months

[torrefaction]

I've officially decided EA gets a bad rap because they're big. This list of games is not NEARLY as bad as I thought it'd be.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Electronic_Arts_games

[SorcererXIII]

I've officially decided EA gets a bad rap because they're big. This list of games is not NEARLY as bad as I thought it'd be.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Electronic_Arts_games

Keep in mind that list of games is all the games they have published. For example they publish the Half Life 2 brick and mortar episodes.

EA does develop a lot of good games too, and IMO has a much better proportion of good to bad than most other developers, it's just that EA is under greater scrutiny given their huge market share (and I'm guessing they wouldn't have that market share if somebody didn't agree with me about their games being good!)

[Slack3r78]

Ugg your right. My total bad I'm out of touch. I edited my post to reflect my mistake.
It's okay. Nothing like a francophobe making themselves look foolish to give me a good laugh.

[ElektroDragon]

I've officially decided EA gets a bad rap because they're big. This list of games is not NEARLY as bad as I thought it'd be.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Electronic_Arts_games

Yah, but if that list were sorted by year, you'd see a steady decline from greatness, into mediocrity, into absolute trash.

[DaXIthR]

I used to think it would be bad if EA bought Ubisoft. But now it seems like that might give Ubi the capital to support more original titles. And, if not, it will just be business as usual with about 9 Tom Clancy games released per fiscal year.

I don't know. EA has grown more and more conservative over time. That's why they put so much into EA Sports/ EA sports BIG and get so much out of it. That's why they bought the license to LoTR and Harry Potter.

UbiSoft has always tried to experiment somewhat. They decided to support the Wii right out of the gate, and it paid off. So much so, that EA pretty apologized and announced a shift in focus.

I wouldn't want EA to harm that aspect of UbiSoft, which I think is very likely. Why bother with Assassin's Creed when you can make a spin-off for Prince of Persia?

[lockwoodx]

It's okay. Nothing like a francophobe making themselves look foolish to give me a good laugh.


Of course I'm afraid of the french. They might cave in and surrender to any enemy at any given moment and supply them with weapons and tech well beyond thier own.

[Slack3r78]

Of course I'm afraid of the french. They might cave in and surrender to any enemy at any given moment and supply them with weapons and tech well beyond thier own.

I really hope you're not American.

[dirtbag]

Amen. I used to think it would be bad if EA bought Ubisoft. But now it seems like that might give Ubi the capital to support more original titles. And, if not, it will just be business as usual with about 9 Tom Clancy games released per fiscal year.

It seems that for the past few years EA and "original titles" have gone together like peanut butter and sardines. EA's unstated corporate mission is to assimilate original developers, strip-mine their properties into irrelevance, and then take them out back for the Old Yeller treatment.

No, thank you.

[DubiousQuality]

Of course I'm afraid of the french. They might cave in and surrender to any enemy at any given moment and supply them with weapons and tech well beyond thier own.

Don't they do that now anyways?

[Wolvie]

Ah shit, Ubi is one step closer to becoming property of the churn-ware kings. This sucks ass.

[Yellowman]

Of course I'm afraid of the french. They might cave in and surrender to any enemy at any given moment and supply them with weapons and tech well beyond thier own.

Spitting in the face of the memory of la resistance! Without them the d-day landings would have been a disaster.

[TheFlyingOrc]

Over the last two years or so, Ubisoft has been becoming more and more like EA, anyway.

And...monopoly? Are you guys serious? This gives them a bigger percentage overall, but it sure doesn't give them a monopoly on the industry. Monopoly law isn't there to keep corporations small so they don't scare you.

[dirtbag]

Over the last two years or so, Ubisoft has been becoming more and more like EA, anyway.

And...monopoly? Are you guys serious? This gives them a bigger percentage overall, but it sure doesn't give them a monopoly on the industry. Monopoly law isn't there to keep corporations small so they don't scare you.


Thank you. The Antitrust laws require there to be an "unreasonable restraint on trade" before it's a problem. Now, if the big remaining publishers started price-fixing or something like that, we'd have something to bitch about.