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Ubisoft

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Ubisoft Entertainment S.A.
Company typePublic
IndustryInteractive entertainment
Founded1986
HeadquartersMontreuil-sous-Bois[1]
Paris, France[2]
Key people
Yves Guillemot, CEO
Yannis Mallat, CEO of Montreal Studio
Michel Ancel, Creative director
ProductsRayman
Assassin's Creed
Beyond Good & Evil
Brothers in Arms
Far Cry series
Heroes of Might and Magic
Myst
Prince of Persia
Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell
Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six
RevenueIncrease € 1,058 billion sales (2009) Increase$1.4 billion[3]
Increase €155 million
Increase €109.8 million
Total assets3,604,841,000 Euro (2020) Edit this on Wikidata
Number of employees
Increase 5,750 [4]
Websitewww.ubi.com
www.ubisoftgroup.com

Ubisoft Entertainment S.A. (Euronext: UBI) (Template:Pron-en yoo-bee-soft[5]) is a French computer and video game publisher and developer, partially owned by Electronic Arts (20%) but still independent, with headquarters in Montreuil-sous-Bois, France. The company has a worldwide presence with studios in 17 countries and subsidiaries in 28 countries.[4]

As of 2008, it was the third-largest independent video game publisher in Europe, and the fourth largest in the United States.[4] Ubisoft's revenue for 2002-2003 was €453 million; for fiscal year 2003-2004, this grew to €508 million. As of 2009, Ubisoft employed more than 5,750 people, of which over 4,800 are classed as working in production.[4] The company's largest development studio is Ubisoft Montreal, which in 2004 employed approximately 1,600 people.[6] Yves Guillemot, a founding brother, was the chairman and CEO. As for 2008–2009, Ubisoft's revenue was €1,058 million, reaching the 1 billion euro milestone for the first time in its history.

History

The five brothers of the Guillemot family founded Ubisoft as a computer game publisher in 1986 in France (Brittany). 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.[7]

In the early 1990 years, 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 2000, Ubisoft had acquired Red Storm Entertainment.[8]

In February 2001, they acquired Düsseldorf, Germany based Blue Byte Software.[9]

In March 2001, Gores Technology Group sold The Learning Company's entertainment division (which includes games originally published by Brøderbund Software, Mattel, Mindscape and Strategic Simulations, Inc.) to them. The sale included the rights to IPs such as the Myst and Prince of Persia series.[10]

In October 2001, they acquired Gamebusters and moved them to the German Offices.[11]

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.[12]

In March 2005, Ubisoft acquired part of MC2-Microïds (Microïds Canada) and integrated it into Ubisoft Montreal.[13]

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 11 April 2007, Ubisoft announced that it had acquired German game developer Sunflowers,[14] followed by an acquisition of Japanese developer Digital Kids that November.[15]

Ubisoft is also responsible for publishing famous franchises produced by other important studios for some specific platforms, such as Resident Evil 4 for PC, which is a Capcom production, and Innocent Life: A Futuristic Harvest Moon for PlayStation 2 and Harvest Moon Online, which are Marvelous Interactive productions.

On 8 July 2008, Ubisoft made the acquisition of Hybride Technologies, a Montreal-based studio renowned for its expertise in the creation of visual effects for cinema, television and advertising. Created over 15 years ago, Hybride employs 100 team members. The studio’s many projects include such innovative films as 300, Frank Miller’s Sin City and the Spy Kids series.

On 10 November 2008, Ubisoft acquired Massive Entertainment from Activision.[16]

Studios

As the fourth largest video game company in the world as of 2009, Ubisoft studios employs the second largest amount of in-house development staff in the world and has several divisions and offices throughout the world.[4] While some were founded by Ubisoft, others have been acquired over time. Some of these studios are:

Current

Defunct

Games

Main article: List of Ubisoft games

Upcoming games

2010

2011

Unknown date

Upcoming motion pictures

Game engines

Ubisoft utilizes a multitude of engines. In the current generation, it has licensed third party engines like Epic's Games' Unreal Engine 2.5 (Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Double Agent, Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Conviction), Unreal Engine 3.0 (Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas, and Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas 2, Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway), GRIN's Diesel Engine (Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter (PC), Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 (PC)), and the CryEngine (Far Cry Instincts) Onyx Engine was used in several 2007 DS and PSP releases; Cranium Kabookii, Chessmaster: The Art of Learning (DS), Surf's Up (DS and PSP), and TMNT (DS and PSP).[citation needed]

In addition, it has utilized proprietary and first party technology, including: the Anvil engine (Assassin's Creed, Prince of Persia, Shaun White Snowboarding, Assassin's Creed II), the YETI engine (Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter,Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2, America's Army: True Soldiers, Beowulf, Lost: Via Domus), the Jade engine (Peter Jackson's King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie, Beyond Good & Evil, Rayman Raving Rabbids, TMNT, Rayman Raving Rabbids 2, Naruto: Rise of a Ninja, Naruto: The Broken Bond), the LyN engine (Rabbids Go Home, Red Steel 2), and the Dunia engine (Far Cry 2, Avatar: The Game).

Uplay

With the release of Assassin's Creed II in 2009, Ubisoft launched the Uplay network, which is activated either in-game or via the Uplay website.[31] Uplay allows players to connect with other gamers, and to earn rewards based on achievements in Uplay enabled games, with Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot stating that "the more you play, the more free goods you will be able to have".[32]

Controversies

Ubisoft had, for a time, used the controversial StarForce copy protection technology that installs 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.[citation needed] On 14 April 2006, Ubisoft confirmed that they would stop using StarForce on their games, citing complaints from customers.[33]

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.[34][35]

Yves Guillemot, the CEO of Ubisoft, was quoted in the company's third-quarter 2008-09 sales report as saying "as some of our games did not meet the required quality levels to achieve their full potential, they need more sales promotions than anticipated."[36]

In January 2010, Ubisoft has announced the Online Services Platform, which forces customers to not only authenticate on the first game launch, but to remain online continually while playing, with the game even pausing if network connection is lost. This makes it impossible to play the game offline, to resell it, and means that should Ubisoft's servers go down, the game will be unplayable.[37] In February 2010, review versions of Assassin's Creed II and Settlers 7 for PC contained this new DRM scheme, confirming that it is already in use, and that instead of pausing the game, it would discard all progress since the last checkpoint or save game[38]. However, subsequent patches for Assassin's Creed 2 allow the player to continue playing once their connection has been restored without lost progress[39].

In March 2010 outages to the Ubisoft DRM servers were reported, causing about 5% of legitimate buyers to be unable to play Assassin's Creed 2 and Silent Hunter 5 games[40][41]. Ubisoft initially said this was the result of the number of users attempting to access their servers to play, however Ubisoft later claimed that the real cause of the outages were denial-of-service attacks.[40][41][42]

Lawsuits

In 2008, Ubisoft sued Optical Experts Manufacturing (OEM), a DVD Duplication company for $25 million plus damages for the leak and distribution of its Assassins Creed PC game. The lawsuit claims that OEM did not take proper measures to protect its product as stated in its contract with Ubisoft. The complaint also alleges that OEM admitted to all the problems in the complaint.[43]

See also

References

  1. ^ http://ubisoftgroup.com/index.php?p=65&art_id=
  2. ^ http://ubisoftgroup.com/index.php?p=62&art_id=
  3. ^ Nunneley, Stephany (2009-04-29). "Ubisoft sales for Q4 show increase of 14% to $1.4 billion". videogaming247. Retrieved 2010-02-24.
  4. ^ a b c d e "At a glance". Ubisoft. 2009-04. Retrieved 2010-02-24. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  5. ^ Stephen Totilo (publisher), Alexandre Amancio, Clint Hocking, and Louis-Pierre Pharand (2007-09-17). How To Pronounce… “Ubisoft” (The Official Explanation) (Video). MTV Networks. Event occurs at 0:22. Retrieved 2009-07-03.
  6. ^ French, Michael (2007-02-07). "Ubisoft Montreal to become world's biggest studio". Develop Magazine. Retrieved 2007-11-01.
  7. ^ "History". Ubisoft. Retrieved 2010-02-24.
  8. ^ "Ubi Soft Acquires Red Storm Entertainment". Blue's News. 2000-08-29. Retrieved 2010-02-24.
  9. ^ Ho, Jennifer (2001-02-09). "Ubi Soft acquires Blue Byte Software". Gamespot. Retrieved 2010-02-24.
  10. ^ "Ubi Soft Acquires The Learning Company's Entertainment Division". GameZone. 2001-03-07. Retrieved 2010-02-24.
  11. ^ a b c d e f g h i "History for Ubisoft Entertainment SA". MobyGames. Retrieved 2010-02-24.
  12. ^ Feldman, Curt (2004-12-20). "Electronic Arts buys stake in Ubisoft in "hostile" act". Gamespot. Retrieved 2007-11-09.
  13. ^ "Ubisoft Montreal enters into an agreement to acquire Microids Canada's development operations". Ubisoft. 2005-03-02. Retrieved 2007-11-09.
  14. ^ "Ubisoft Acquires SunFlowers, Anno Franchise". Gamasutra. 11 April 2007. Retrieved 2007-04-12.
  15. ^ "Ubisoft Buys Japanese Studio". GameTab. 2007-11-05. Retrieved 2007-11-05.
  16. ^ "Ubisoft acquires the assets of Massive Entertainment" (Press release). Ubisoft. 2008-11-10. Retrieved 2009-02-24.
  17. ^ "Related Designs Software GmbH". MobyGames. Retrieved 2010-02-24.
  18. ^ "Ubisoft acquires Sunflowers, takes stake in Related Designs". Spong. 2007-04-12. Retrieved 2010-02-24.
  19. ^ Boyes, Emma (April 15, 2008). "Ubisoft orders Indian takeaway". GameSpot. Retrieved 2008-09-11.
  20. ^ "Ubisoft Divertissements Inc". MobyGames. Retrieved 2010-02-24.
  21. ^ "UBISOFT OUVRE OFFICIELLEMENT SES PORTES À QUÉBEC" (in French). Ubisoft. 2005-06-01. Retrieved 2010-02-24.
  22. ^ "Ubisoft São Paulo". MobyGames. Retrieved 2010-02-24.
  23. ^ Sharma, Money (2008-06-17). "Q & A with Ubisoft Singapore Managing Director Olivier de Rotalier". Animation Xpress. Retrieved 2010-02-24.
  24. ^ UBISOFT® EXTENDS GLOBAL REACH OPENING NEW STUDIO IN TORONTO
  25. ^ UBISOFT® APPOINTS JADE RAYMOND AS HEAD OF TORONTO STUDIO
  26. ^ [http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/28677/Ubisoft_Unveils_Toronto_Studio_Splinter_Cell_Project.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+GamasutraNews+%28Gamasutra+News%29&utm_content=Google+Reader Ubisoft Unveils Toronto Studio, Splinter Cell Project ]
  27. ^ "Academy of Champions Announced". Gaming Union. May 20, 2009.
  28. ^ Sinclair, Brendan (2006-03-30). "Wolfpack Studios being shut down". GameSpot. Retrieved 2010-02-24.
  29. ^ http://www.ludoid.fr/ludographie.htm
  30. ^ Totilo, Stephen (26 May 2010). "New Splinter Cell, Built On Conviction, In The Works". Kotaku.com. Retrieved 26 May 2010.
  31. ^ "Assassin's Creed II and Splinter Cell to feature Uplay system". 21 November 2009. {{cite web}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Missing or empty |url= (help)
  32. ^ "Ubisoft: All Our Games Will Do This UPlay Thing". Retrieved 26 November 2009.
  33. ^ Thorsen, Tor (2006-04-14). "Ubisoft officially dumps Starforce". Gamespot. Retrieved 2010-02-24.
  34. ^ Plunkett, Luke (2008-01-08). "3 Companies Bar EGM From Coverage Following Poor Reviews". Kotaku. Retrieved 2010-02-24.
  35. ^ Hsu, Dan (2008-01-09). "Banned". 1UP.com. Retrieved 2010-02-24.
  36. ^ "Ubisoft 3rd-quarter 2008-09 sales report" (pdf). Ubisoft. 2009-01-22. Retrieved 2010-02-24.
  37. ^ "Online Services Platform Q&A". Ubisoft. Retrieved 2010-02-24.
  38. ^ Francis, Tom (2010-02-17). "Constant net connection required to play Assassin's Creed 2 on PC". PC Gamer. Retrieved 2010-02-24.
  39. ^ Ubisoft Patch Makes its Internet DRM Less Painful
  40. ^ a b Ubisoft Blames DRM Outage on "Server Attack"
  41. ^ a b Bramwell, Tom (2010-03-08). "Ubisoft DRM was "attacked" at weekend". EuroGamer. Retrieved 08-03-2010. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  42. ^ "Ubisoft's official Twitter post regarding attacks".
  43. ^ "Ubisoft vs OEM".[dead link]
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