Topic: Ubi Soft being bought out?

[Savior]

Ubi

I Like Ubi Soft alot. Splinter Cell, and Prince of Persia are two franchises i enjoy. I hope they arent bought out, unless its by Nintendo.  

[Arbok]

I have yet to buy any Ubi Soft games, so it doesn't effect me much... if the buyer is EA, I doubt the amount of support Nintendo gets would change.

[PaLaDiN]

I loathe Prince of Persia in all its Ubisoft iterations, but then again Chaos Theory PC was pretty good, so I'm not quite sure what to make of this fate.

One thing I will say is that their obsession with voice-only-no-text seriously pisses me off and I hope they get bought by a company that won't let them waste any of their budget on voice acting.

[Ian Sane]

EA taking over Ubisoft has been rumoured for a while.  Originally though the talks were of a hostile takeover by EA.  This is the first I've heard of Ubi actually willing to be aquired.  Perhaps they feel EA's taking over one way or another so they might as well do it in good terms and perhaps benefit from it.

I don't like Ubisoft so I don't really care if they get killed off.  But I really hate EA and I don't like this recent trend of them taking over everything.  The problem with corporations is they're so impersonal.  If an individual pisses me off I can DDT their ass.  I can't DDT EA.  I can't even give them the finger.  They're like the Nothing from the Neverending Story, clearly a major threat but lacking any physical existence.  

[jasonditz]

That's what Nintendo should do... buy out Ubi and announce that the "Batman: Rise of Sin Tzu" sequels will all be Rev exclusive.

[ThePerm]

its funny...ea and nintend make about the same amount of money each year....but ea is buying everything while nintendo is saving its money. There is alot of hate for ea....but honestly...i think we should have less publishers...i think all we need are a few really good ones. Once the few have controll..they will either halfass things..or have enough controll to prevent halfassedness. Ea sports games may not appeal to the average Ninty fan, but they certainly appeal to the hardcore sports game fan.

i like ubisoft..and i like what their doing atonomously..except prince of persial. Sandsm of Time kicked ass...warrrior within pissed everyone off who liked sands of time. In fact they made it the opposite of every reason why people liked sands of time over every other bs game.

[KDR_11k]

I think they're trying to get sold before EA can assimilate them.

I wonder if the gov would even allow for UBI and EA to merge, they're the two largest publishers in the US, that would create a quasi-monopoly and therefore call the authorities on their case.

[ShyGuy]

A Beyond Good and Evil sequel probably isn't coming either way..

But seriously, if the next gen games are going to require an average of a 100 workers per title, only the ginormous publishers will be able to put out more than two or three games a year.

I just get nervous of Microsoft getting cocky and buying EA.

[Caillan]

No, having only a few publishers will screw things up. In theory all markets in a capitalist country are meant to support competition, but all too often the industry gets whittled down to a few large oligarchic corporations. A small group of companies who control a market will tend to act with anti-competitive tedancies. This is extreme in the oil industry; it is so pronounced because the market is very price in-elastic. With games people will just stop buying them, and hence there'll be a crash. There has already been inidcations that the price of next-gen gaming will rise, right?

I think eventually we'll see only a few big publishers running the industry, because you need quite a bit of capital to set one up, but until then I think as much diversity as possible is a good thing.

[ThePerm]

if there were no third parties and there was just nintendo and sega...id be happy..


but seriously if there are only a few third parties..they will compete with each other at least..and there will be a bigger rivalry...in the 8bit/16 bit days there were more then just two devolopers...but there were thousands of them like there is now. The industry was pretty much dictated by Nintendo and sega's licensing. Pc was in the mix..but it was its whole other thing. With sony completely getting rid of standards, and microsoft merging console gaming and pc gaming into redundancy...there are too many damn games coming out...too much competition. If a few games compete against each other thats fine..but a few thousand..thats a "blood bath"

[Caillan]

Quote
but seriously if there are only a few third parties..they will compete with each other at least..and there will be a bigger rivalry

Why? What examples of this can you provide of this? Fewer competitors will make it easier to collaborate. Once again I'll cite the oil industry as a clear example.

I don't quite understand exactly what you're saying, but even if there is an over-arching rivalry between two big console manufacturers, there can still be lots of smaller third parties as well. And what's wrong with having so much competition? You don't have to buy the crap games, and if anything they should encourage publishers to assert standards of quality, or at least be pickier about what they publish. Then they won't be wasting their time.

[jasonditz]

Quote
Originally posted by: Caillan

Quote
but seriously if there are only a few third parties..they will compete with each other at least..and there will be a bigger rivalry

Why? What examples of this can you provide of this?

EA and Sega Sports last year.  

[jasonditz]

Quote
Originally posted by: KDR_11k
I think they're trying to get sold before EA can assimilate them.

I wonder if the gov would even allow for UBI and EA to merge, they're the two largest publishers in the US, that would create a quasi-monopoly and therefore call the authorities on their case.

Ubi's number two in the EU, not in the US. Even combined their total revenue for last year was only about $3.5 billion worldwide, which is still incidentally not as much as Nintendo's almost $5 billion.

[KDR_11k]

Last year Ubi was number two and Activision #3 in the US, IIRC. Nintendo was below both of them. Ubi doesn't service Japan so that's where the extra money is coming from.

Generally, fewer companies will breed an oligopoly, see the MPAA or RIAA for examples. Hell, we're already seeing a form of oligopolic practices, namely price fixing, in the videogame market. You don't see publishers trying to undercut each other, they all sell at 50$ because that's the accepted price. Sometimes they try to grab more with the most hyped games but generally games go for 50 unless they believe the game doesn't sell.

[dack25]

I've only bought two of the SC games (one for Cube and one for PS2). I was going to buy CT but it seems like Ubisoft only makes the game for Xbox and then has a smaller development team work on the ports.  

[jasonditz]

Quote
Originally posted by: KDR_11k
Last year Ubi was number two and Activision #3 in the US, IIRC. Nintendo was below both of them. Ubi doesn't service Japan so that's where the extra money is coming from.

Generally, fewer companies will breed an oligopoly, see the MPAA or RIAA for examples. Hell, we're already seeing a form of oligopolic practices, namely price fixing, in the videogame market. You don't see publishers trying to undercut each other, they all sell at 50$ because that's the accepted price. Sometimes they try to grab more with the most hyped games but generally games go for 50 unless they believe the game doesn't sell.

Seems like again, the EA Sports vs 2K Series was a good counterexample of publishers trying to undercut each other instead of price-fixing.

In fact, it seems like I'm seeing a LOT more games that come out at less than $50 now than I did, say, 17 years ago. And yet 17 years ago, the dollar was worth a lot more, and you had a lot more publishers.

I wish I'd had as many options for $20 games when I was a kid. I remember saving up all summer one year to buy Might and Magic 2 for the Sega Genesis. It cost me $69.99 at Toys R Us. When's the last time any of us paid $69.99 for a console game that didn't come with any hardware?

[jasonditz]

You young whipersnappers!

[ThePerm]

i payed $69.99 for goldeneye

[Galford]

I paid 74.99 for SNES Chrono Trigger.

[Savior]

those SNES Cartridges sure were expensive. I remember Secret of Mana being really expensive too.  

[Myxtika1 Azn]

Wasn't Secret of Mana ~$80?  I bought Clayfighters (blegh) for $70. Was such a waste of money as was Forsaken 64.

[KDR_11k]

I paid 70$ for RE4 but that's how much games cost in Europe.

[stevey]

I hate ea they just want money. The resone there buying so many 3rd partys is there work there people to death, look at madden a new game every 5 month just like the last sill being sold why with online you can just update it.  

[Arbok]

Quote
Originally posted by: stevey
I hate ea they just wan't money.

Isn't that the reason why companies exist in the first place?

[Pale]

Speaking of the evils of publishers, how sweet would it be if Nintendo combines its game download service with a almost free means of small devs and wannabe devs publishing their own IP online.  Can you imagine writing a home brew game, putting it up for download for 5 bucks a tick and have Nintendo maybe take a buck off the top for the service?  I would love that.