Ubisoft
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Ubisoft Entertainment | |
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| Type | Public |
| Founded | 1986 |
| Headquarters | Montreuil-sous-Bois, France  |
| Key people | Yves Guillemot, CEO Yannis Mallat, CEO of Montreal Studio Michel Ancel, Game Designer Jade Raymond, Producer |
| Industry | Interactive entertainment |
| Products | Assassin's Creed Brothers in Arms Far Cry Harvest Moon Myst Prince of Persia Rayman Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell |
| Revenue | €538 million sales FY2004-05 |
| Operating income | €41.4 million |
| Net income | €27.2 million FY 2004-05 (before goodwill amortization) |
| Employees | Over 3500, 1760 in production tasks at the 1/20/2005 |
| Website | www.ubi.com www.ubisoftgroup.com |
Ubisoft Entertainment (formerly Ubi Soft) is a French computer and video game publisher and developer with headquarters in Montreuil-sous-Bois, France. The company has facilities in over 20 countries, including development studios in Montreal and Québec City, Quebec, Canada; Barcelona, Spain; Shanghai, China; Singapore; North Carolina, USA; Düsseldorf, Germany; Sofia, Bulgaria; Bucharest, Romania; Casablanca, Morocco and Milan, Italy, amongst other locations.
As of 2004, it was the third-largest independent video game publisher in Europe, and the seventh largest in the United States. Ubisoft's revenue for 2002-2003 was €453 million; for fiscal year 2003-2004, this grew to €508 million. As of 2005, Ubisoft employed more than 3,500 people, of which over 1,700 are classed as working in production. The company's largest development studio is Ubisoft Montreal, which in 2004 employed approximately 1,600 people.[1] Yves Guillemot, a founding brother, was the chairman and CEO.
The correct pronunciation of the company name is you-be-soft, though it is also commonly mispronounced oo-be-soft.[2]
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[edit] History
The five brothers of the Guillemot family founded Ubisoft as a computer game publisher in 1986 in France. Yves Guillemot soon made deals with Electronic Arts, Sierra On-Line, and MicroProse to distribute their games in France. By the end of the decade, Ubisoft began expanding to other markets, including the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany.
In the early 1990s, Ubisoft initiated its in-house game development program which led to the 1994 opening of a studio in Montreuil, France, which later became their headquarters. Ubisoft became a publicly traded company in 1996 and continued to expand to offices around the globe, opening locations in Shanghai and Montreal.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Ubisoft committed itself to online games by getting behind Uru: Ages Beyond Myst, The Matrix Online, and the European and Chinese operation of EverQuest. The publisher established ubi.com as its online division. However, in February 2004, Ubisoft cancelled the online portion of Uru and backed out of the publishing deal on The Matrix Online. Nevertheless, a mere week later, the company announced its acquisition of Wolfpack Studios, developer of Shadowbane.
In December 2004, a rival game corporation Electronic Arts purchased a 19.9% stake in the firm, an action Ubisoft referred to as "hostile" on EA's part.[3]
In March 2005, Ubisoft acquired part of MC2-Microïds (Microïds Canada) and integrated it into their Ubisoft Montreal.[4]
In July 2006 Ubisoft also bought the Driver franchise from Atari for a sum of €19 million (USD$24 million) in cash for the franchise, technology rights, and most asset. Additionally, though Ubisoft is not acquiring the studio outright, the members of Driver developer Reflections Interactive became employees of Ubisoft. As a result, Reflections Interactive was subsequently renamed Ubisoft Reflections.
On April 11, 2007, Ubisoft announced that it had acquired German game developer Sunflowers,[5] followed by an acquisition of Japanese developer Digital Kids that November.[6]
[edit] Games
[edit] Upcoming games
[edit] 2008
- Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway (PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360)
- Driver (PlayStation 3)
- Far Cry 2 (PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360)
- Innocent Life: A Futuristic Harvest Moon - Special Edition (PlayStation 2)
- Harvest Moon: Island of Happiness (Nintendo DS)
- Harvest Moon Online (PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PC)
- Rayman Raving Rabbids TV Party (Wii, release in late 2008)
- Red Steel 2 (Working Title, Wii, release in late 2008)
- Rune Factory 2 (Nintendo DS)
- Tom Clancy's EndWar (PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360)
- Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X. (PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360)
- Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Conviction (PC and Xbox 360)
- Prince of Persia (PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360)
- Shaun White Snowboarding (PC, Wii, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360)
[edit] 2009
- Avatar
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
[edit] Unkown date
[edit] Upcoming motion pictures
- Citizen Siege
- Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
- Untitled Rabbids film
[edit] Controversies
Ubisoft had, for a time, used the controversial StarForce copy protection technology that installs hidden drivers on a system and is known to cause some hardware problems and compatibility issues with certain operating systems, starting with the game Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, which was not compatible with Windows XP Professional x64 Edition for quite some time until a patch was released by the makers of StarForce.[7] On April 14, 2006, Ubisoft confirmed that they would stop using StarForce on their games citing complaints from customers.[8]
In the February 2008 issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly, Editor-in-Chief, Dan “Shoe” Hsu, asserted that Ubisoft had ceased to provide all Ubisoft titles to the EGM for any coverage purposes as a result of prior critical previews and negative reviews.[9][10]
When Ubisoft software is installed a product registration application called "PRegScheduler MFC Application" is copied as "PowerReg Scheduler.exe" outside of its specified installation directories. It is placed directly in the Startup folder rather than linking to the Ubisoft folder. PowerReg Scheduler.exe may show up as "PowerREGISTER" in your task list. Examination of the programs properties shows the "Company Name" to be blank, even though the rest of the property information is available. The inability to identify this application by installation directory or by company information has resulted in reports of alarm that an unknown program by an unidentified company has been placed in their startup folder for unknown purpose.[11]
Recently, after the unwrapping of titles like Prince of Persia: Never Fight Alone and Beyond Good & Evil 2 at Ubidays 2008 for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, the company has been flamed by members in the Ubisoft official forums for not supporting the successful Wii console. [12] A growing belief is that the company is developing casual games such as Petz, on the Wii in order to fund expensive HD games. In fact Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot even admitted that "the company's casual games business was "extremely profitable" and helped to finance the initially costly development of games for next-generation consoles"[13] Many have started to figure that "next generation consoles" may not include the Wii. Guillemot's promise of "Nintendo-Like" quality games has not been realized and in fact, there are only two releases for the console that is scheduled to come out in 2008, Red Steel 2 and Rayman Raving Rabbids TV Party.[14] Even Beyond Good & Evil 2, whose predecessor suffered from poor sales and sold more on Wii's predecessor, the Gamecube, was chosen to be developed on HD consoles despite higher development costs and the uncertainty of the game's commercial reception. Countless believe that the company will continue to make "extremely profitable" casual games on the system and toned down spinoffs such as Shaun White Snowboarding[15] (with features like free roaming and online mode absent), while the other consoles will get full-fledged games, despite the Wii being the sales leader of its generation.
[edit] See also
- Ubisoft Entertainment games
- Ubisoft Reflections
- Ubisoft Montreal
- Ubisoft Romania
- List of Ubisoft games
[edit] References
- ^ French, Michael (February 7, 2007). Ubisoft Montreal to become world's biggest studio. Develop Magazine. Retrieved on 2007-11-01.
- ^ How To Pronounce… “Ubisoft” (The Official Explanation). MTV. Retrieved on 2008-05-02.
- ^ Feldman, Curt. "Electronic Arts buys stake in Ubisoft in "hostile" act", Gamespot, December 20, 2004. Retrieved on 2007-11-09.
- ^ "Ubisoft Montreal enters into an agreement to acquire Microids Canada's development operations", Ubisoft, March 2, 2005. Retrieved on 2007-11-09.
- ^ "Ubisoft Acquires SunFlowers, Anno Franchise", Gamasutra, April 11, 2007. Retrieved on 2007-04-12.
- ^ "Ubisoft Buys Japanese Studio", GameTab, November 5, 2007. Retrieved on 2007-11-05.
- ^ StarForce website page about patch
- ^ Ubisoft officially dumps Starforce
- ^ 3 Companies Bar EGM From Coverage Following Poor Reviews
- ^ "Banned", Dan "Shoe" Hsu's blog at 1UP.com
- ^ Technical information on PRegScheduler
- ^ Ubisoft forum post
- ^ http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSL2287657620070822 Guillemot admits
- ^ http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7839&Itemid=2 Nintendo like quality
- ^ http://wii.ign.com/objects/142/14256455.html
[edit] External links
- Ubisoft's public site
- Ubisoft's corporate site
- Red Storm Entertainment, subsidiary developer of Ubi Soft
- Wolfpack Studios, subsidiary developer of Ubi Soft
- List of Atari ST520 games published by UBI Soft
- Interview with Ubisoft's Alain Corre, GamesIndustry.biz, October 31, 2006
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