EA buys 20% of UbiSoft

EA announces this right after they get unexpectedly blocked out of a buyout of Digital Illusions (DICE). Their initial stock purchase of DICE? 19 percent. hmmmmm

Sad news.

Well, EA hasn't got any power over ubi yet. They probbly just want to make profit out of it. But, if they buy their way up to 51%, it's time to run away!

Quote from Marcos

Sad news. Well, EA hasn't got any power over ubi yet. They probbly just want to make profit out of it. But, if they buy their way up to 51%, it's time to run away!

This is (IMHO) a backdoor way to acquire lucrative liscences and brands. If this goes through, EA will control most of the top flight action game series (except for the id games). They'll have all the Rainbox Six, Splinter Cell, James Bond, Prince of Persia, Brothers In Arms, Medal of Honor, and Battlefield 1942. Those are all series that are going to have gauranteed success rates on all games, plus expansion packs, plus online content, etc etc.

Add that to all these other franchises they own: Sims, Sim City, Harry Potter, Need for Speed, Command and Conquer, Ultima, Rayman, Myst, Far Cry, etc. Plus all the EA Sports and EA Sports BIG games.

If this goes through, EA becomes the 800 lbs gorilla in the corner. They control the majority of big game franchises. Every handware manufacturer will have to go through EA if they want their console to survive. It also means EA will be able to then pressure the hardware side when it comes to designing and releasing consoles.

Think of it this way: Nintendo has a poor rep for working with 3rd party publishers (i.e. EA). Let's say Nintendo doesn't play ball very much with EA. Maybe this means maybe EA won't put out Madden for the first year. Or maybe they won't have any launch title games. Nintendo struggles for a while, then gives EA a better deal about tech liscensing. EA then ports it's games quicker, and releases more for the new console. Nintendo is now liscensing cheaper than it wants and had to endure months of stale game sales. EA got to save of publishing costs and gets a better deal in the end. It's all about leverage, and EA is buying it a chunk at a time.

Quote from Fletch

EA announces this right after they get unexpectedly blocked out of a buyout of Digital Illusions (DICE). Their initial stock purchase of DICE? 19 percent. hmmmmm

...and they just offered the DICE stockholders a completely redefined deal, this thing isn't over yet.

Quote from FrieChamp

...and they just offered the DICE stockholders a completely redefined deal, this thing isn't over yet.

It pretty much is unless EA ponies up way more money. The deal to completely absorb DICE requires 90% approval by stock holders. There are two groups of DICE stock holders block thing. One owns 12% and the other has 16%. EA's recent restructuring it was to extend the deadline, but didn't provide any significant increase in funding. Neither of those groups is going to budge until EA raises the buy price to reflect how much money DICE is going to rake in for BF2 and subsequent add on packs

actually Brothers in Arms is owned by Gearbox.

Oooh Ooooh! Publish with Vivendi Universal! I hear they treat developers awesomely.

Quote from Fletch

if you ever get locked in your office by your new overlords, just send out the call and we'll come break you out. we might even burn things

hell i dont even need a good reason to burn shit

Well for now let's just hope it doesn't come to this. And I imagine something like this wouldn't be a matter of a month or two.... more like years..

Best of luck to UBI and klein :wink:

http://yahoo.reuters.com/financeQuoteCo ... 746_newsml

In other news:

http://sports.ign.com/articles/574/5745 ... ?fromint=1

MUahahaha.

Anyways, we're not going down without a fight

*hangs up combine "resist" poster in the office*

Fucking Hitler company.

The bosses at EA sit around and scream "I WANT THE WORLD, FOR ME AND ONLY ME!!!111, but the license now!!!!"

it's a business, what do you expect..

[Blocked Image: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v178/JohnnyPark/IGN/EArEVIL.gif]

Pretty much sums it up.

Its amazing how much "bad" press EA is getting now-a-days though, after the over-worked employee fiasco, the NFL exclusivity deal (which seems, IMO, to have brought EA some bad press) and then this takeover has clearly caused some insecurity from people. Lets just hope it doesn't go further.

Mike, if I remember correctly, Gearbox is under a 10-year deal to develop games for the Brothers in Arms series, if Ubisoft was eventually taken over by EA, would you guys have the option to drop out of the deal or would you be binded in a contract with EA?

thats not entirely accurate

ubisoft has the option to publish bia games for ten years.

i'm not at liberty to discuss any of the details further but this ea thing doesn't really affect us.

Quote from mikezilla

but this ea thing doesn't really affect us.

good to hear, and not surprising. When a one company makes this kind of move to acquire a significant, but not controlling, share in another company they don't get control over already existing projects.

I know the feeling is sort of "One publisher to rule them all" right now, but there never really is this kind of consolidation unless there are intrinsic market forces at work. Microsoft became a dominant player in the PC desktop OS market not just because of their aggressive business strategies, but also by the simple fact that it's much easier for consumers and businesses to use one standard operating system that pretty much everyone else uses.

For video games, there is no comparable benefit to having all games be published by one corporation.

True, but games are expensive and EAs giganto cash-sack is a hard thing to resist. If theres anything major to be siad in Steams favour, it is at least effective as provding a cheaper means of distribution for small time devs.

well for ubisoft that doesnt apply since we publish our games on our own.