Video Game Designer

Chapter 456: Acquiring Ubisoft

Although Ubisoft is well-known as a world-class game manufacturer, it has to be said that in the ocean of capital, Ubisoft has not been very optimistic in recent years. The main reason is that Ubisoft has made too little noise .

In the past two years, all financial reports have been in a state of loss, especially when the original Guillemot fell into the hands of Vivendi. Last year’s financial report was released, even with The Division and Far Cry, two games with excellent sales, However, the annual loss also reached 49 million US dollars, including the phenomenon of reorganization and merger of its studios.

Without a good prospect, it is really difficult for Ubisoft as a listed company to attract the attention of many people, especially when Vivendi is still eyeing it.

Under Ubisoft's Guillemot brothers, Canadian investment institutions, including themselves, already have preliminary plans, but they still want to go further to fight against Vivendi, and at the same time make plans for Ubisoft.

The Chinese market has become their first choice. I have to say that if anyone in the global game industry is most optimistic about the Chinese market, then Ubisoft will say that it is second, and no one will say that it is the first.

Maybe they are not the most successful foreign game manufacturers in China, but they are definitely the earliest manufacturers to deploy.

As early as the 1990s when other manufacturers did not even look forward to this market, Ubisoft had already established a subsidiary in China, and introduced a number of well-known masterpieces, and carried out localization.

Ubisoft’s life in the early years was not good, but with the improvement of domestic purchasing power, including the rise of online payment, players are buying more and more games, such as Assassin’s Creed and other well-known games, the domestic sales are very impressive.

Coupled with the fact that the domestic sales of several games from Tianhe Network have been able to rank high on the global list, this makes Ubisoft look at the domestic market even more.

But even if Ubisoft has been deeply involved in the Chinese market in the early years, after all, Ubisoft is still a foreign manufacturer in the eyes of domestic players, and it is not as good as its own family like Tianhe Network.

For the same game with similar quality, players will definitely be more inclined to choose Tianhe Network's games, as can be seen from the comparison between Tianhe Network's 3A and other manufacturers' 3A.

Especially for Platinum Studio, which was previously acquired by Tianhe Network, most of Neil's sales came from Chinese players.

In addition to EA, which has always maintained a good cooperative relationship with Tianhe Network, although everyone thinks that EA is a good hand and plays poorly, but relying on its nepotism with Tianhe Network, EA's revenue in China is still very large. considerable.

At the beginning, they thought a lot about the cooperation partners of Chinese game manufacturers, and the most preferred one was Tianhe Network, followed by Penguin and Wangyi, which had also given them an indication of their preference.

However, Ubisoft didn't want to be on the same boat with Penguin and Wangyi, after all, according to the survey report, the other party's reputation in China's game industry is not very good.

Although the other party is really rich, under the operation of Ubisoft's Guillemot brothers, they have found a Canadian investment institution and continue to let Chinese manufacturers on board, just want to expand Ubisoft's influence in China and achieve a win-win situation the goal of.

Ubisoft suffered serious losses last year, and now Ubisoft also wants to make the financial report more beautiful, so that the industry has enough confidence in them, and investors with voting rights within the company will continue to support their Ubisoft strategy. Not in complicity with Vivendi.

"Is that so? I need to think about it carefully." Hearing what Brother Guillemot said to Yves, Chu He nodded slightly.

The meaning of Ubisoft is very clear. Everything is to get rid of Vivendi. At the same time, Ubisoft also wants to cooperate with Tianhe Network. Although Tianhe Network is not the richest, in terms of capital, compared with Penguin and Internet The difference of 100 million is not a star and a half, but at least there is no pressure to invest in buying part of Ubisoft's equity.

Although there is no way for the outside world to draw financial reports because Tianhe Network has no intention of going public, but from the third-party data survey and the actions of Tianhe Network, it is clear that Tianhe Network is a master with good money.

Coupled with the big sales of The Last Survivor, is there any need to ask if Tianhe Network has money?

"This will be a win-win cooperation. We don't really want to reach a cooperation intention with Penguin and Wangyi. The game should be kept pure. We know very well that Tianhe Network will be such a role." The Guillemot brothers and Yves are still moving Know it with emotion and reason.

"I'll think about it seriously." Chuhe nodded seriously, keeping calm.

After returning to the reception hotel room of Ubisoft's industrial park, Chu He leaned on the bed with his legs on the stool next to him, and put the laptop next to him on his stomach.

The acquisition of part of Ubisoft's shares really needs to be carefully considered. What can the acquisition bring to Tianhe Network?

It doesn't seem to be able to bring anything!

Chuhe thought about it very seriously, and then found that Ubisoft really didn't seem to have anything that he could watch.

technology?

Many programmers and technical teams in Tianhe Network are recruited from international manufacturers such as EA and Ubisoft.

And some things about the core, Ubisoft will definitely not release it.

Influence?

Ubisoft can once again expand its influence in the Chinese market by joining forces with Tianhe Networks. After all, after Tianhe Networks acquired Ubisoft, Ubisoft is considered half of its own.

But what can Tianhe Network do with Ubisoft's influence?

What can't be done, Tianhe Network is really comparable to Ubisoft in the global market today.

Moreover, it will cost a lot to acquire Ubisoft. According to the previous negotiations with the Guillemot brothers, if Tianhe Network is interested, it will need to spend about 450 million US dollars to acquire a 5% stake in Ubisoft.

At the same time, Tianhe Network will not obtain a seat on the board of directors after this investment.

It's affordable to pay, and it doesn't have a great impact on the development of Tianhe Network, but the most important thing is that I can't get anything, which makes Chuhe feel meaningless.

Penguin and Wangyi want to participate. On the one hand, big companies don’t care about small money. On the other hand, it is more important for games. Masterpiece IPs such as Assassin’s Creed and Tom Clancy are very important to Penguin and Wangyi. It can be said to be very tempting.

As for Tianhe Network, its own heavyweight IP is not inferior to those IPs of Assassin's Creed and Ubisoft.

After thinking about it for about three or four days, through the remote Chuhe and Tianhe Network's high-level executives, held several meetings and finally unified an opinion, that is to buy!

There is plenty of working capital available, and buying it will not cause much impact, and after analyzing the cooperation with Ubisoft, many game projects will have room to operate.

For example, IP linkage, this thing is very attractive.

"Ubisoft participates, and if there is a chance in the future, EA participates again, Capcom participates, Konami participates, it is best to have Activision Blizzard participate again, and then put all the classic game IPs together Make a big fight." Chu He couldn't help but smacked his lips.

But Chuhe himself knows that this is just a fantasy.

If it wasn't for Ubisoft's eagerness to get rid of Vivendi and its intention to target the Chinese market, it wouldn't have sold itself to Tianhe Network anyway.

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