Ubi Considering EA Merger

Darkaber

Darkaber

Darkaber

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In a recent interview, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot talked about the French publisher’s future plans. It may come as a surprise to many, but they are still considering a merger with Electronic Arts, who bought a 20% stake in the company some time back. He also talked about the company’s shift into movie production, which they might be investigating with the upcoming film adaptation of Prince of Persia.

“We’re still considering,” he told Gamasutra. “The first option for us is to manage our own company and grow it. The second option is to work with the movie industry, and the third is to merge. We think the market is going to grow fast, and we can take a big share of that market, so we don’t have to change the way things are done at the moment.”
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This is the worst news in a long time for me if this happens :mad:
 
Think this had been thought about a while ago like you said scary if it does happen! I cant see it will though not sure how it will benefit either of the companies in the long run ! The only advantage I suppose would be that they wouldnt both be producing the same types of games so not in competition with each other, but i dont think they do that much anyway.
 
Darkaber said:
This is the worst news in a long time for me if this happens :mad:
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Why? Ubi Soft are just as bad as EA when it comes to releasing rehashed sequels time-and-time again! Rainbow Six, Ghost recon (I think), Splinter Cell - they've hardly raised the bar in gaming recently!

Best also ignore the fact that their PC ports are some of the worse optimisations ever to grace the conversation hall of fame!

-RaZ
 
Ubisoft may release sequels, but each brings something new and they have probably been the best publisher around for the last 3 years.

I am however, quite a fan of EA and believe they get more stick than they deserve.
 
Surely EA will just progressively shut UBI down, thus eliminating competition. They've shut down many of the studios they bought.
 
Whilst Ubisoft do have some real stinkers in their back catalogue (mostly uninspired sequels), there are still some titles that stand out as bringing something new to their respective genres... moreso than EA's offerings, imo, which are just updated sports games with a later date in the title, or another variant of the Sims franchise (The Sims - Doing the Washing Up...?), or very minor changes to the Need for Speed games which only concern the environment you drive around in not the actual driving aspect, which remains unchanged.

I used to really like EA, but nowadays they're a pale version of their former self.
 
What did GRAW2 bring to the table that GRAW hadn't already? Yes, it was more polished, but what was new and exciting?

What about Rainbow Six? I seem to remember the latest incarnation completely bombing! Sure, it didn't get loads of bad reviews, but I've not seen so many copies of a game in second hand bins since Dead to Rights!

I wouldn't say UbiSoft are any more innovative than EA are. Conversly, I agree that EA get far more stick than they deserve - they do actually release a lot of great games, but bandwagons are far too easy to jump on. I just don't like the idea of a publisher being herolded as unique and exciting when they're just as guilty as the "bad guys"!

On a side note, why do people always call EA the big game-developer-eating-monster? Surely the game developers are in the wrong for SELLING themselves to EA?

-RaZ
 
I guess not all of EA's acquisitions have been "friendly"... their 20% stake in Ubisoft, for example, was considered as hostile, if i remember correctly.

Ubisoft probably are as bad as EA in terms of releasing some real turkeys, but in my case I've had my fingers burnt more often buying a less-than-impressive game from EA than I have from Ubisoft.

EA remind me of Ocean, in the good ol' days of home computing... they'd have a good idea for a game initially, but then they flogged it to death by releasing too many variants.

Ubisoft, on the other hand, remind me of US Gold.... probably just as bad at scraping the bottom of the barrel with pointless sequels, but releasing the occasional gem of a game (anyone else remember Bounty Bob Strikes Back...?) that makes me forgive them.
 
I have no particular problem with either company, but in the essence of competition, I'd rather the biggest publishing/developing house didn't swallow the second largest. Less monopolies equal more variety and all that jazz.
 
MoNkeE said:
What did GRAW2 bring to the table that GRAW hadn't already? Yes, it was more polished, but what was new and exciting?
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GRAW2 in multiplayer was head and shoulders better than the first one. The first was created mainly as a single player campaign and I think Ubisoft were taken back by just how popular multiplayer was, so the sequel was mostly aimed at multiplayer with a shorter single player campaign.

MoNkeE said:
What about Rainbow Six? I seem to remember the latest incarnation completely bombing! Sure, it didn't get loads of bad reviews, but I've not seen so many copies of a game in second hand bins since Dead to Rights!
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Rainbow Six: Vegas was well recieved and is one of the most popular games on the Xbox360. Are you sure you're not thinking of the one prior to this one?
 
Ubisoft has gone way downhill as of late, so I really don't give a damn if EA merges with them or not. Just means one less scummy generic developer really (you can see the redundancies coming a mile off on this one)
 
I think the splinter cell series, vegas(360) and Graw(360) are all very good games but otherwise ubisoft has gone downhill with regards the rest of its catalogue.
 
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