Ubisoft plans to take down EA and Activision to become the world’s #1 videogame publisher someday.
When it comes to multi-platform videogame publishers (which excludes Nintendo), there are certain giants in the room. A couple of those giants, Activision and EA, are bigger than most of the others, with Ubisoft right behind them in the third spot. Ubsioft CEO Yves Guillemot says this may not be the case for long, with Ubisoft now able to calculate a plan to move into the top spot.
Holding Ubisoft back in the past was EA’s partial ownership, which it sold off in 2010. Guillemot told MCV: “When [EA] left it changed lots of things for us. We had a competitor owning a share of the company and we were always wary that they could decide they would go for the company – and that wouldn’t have been welcome.”
Guillemot says that EA’s stake in Ubisoft prevented the company from acquiring new studios or making other moves that conflicted with EA. “So now we are totally independent again, we feel a lot better, we are number three and our goal is to beat those guys, EA and Activision, at some point,” Guillemot added.
Ubisoft likely brought in around $1.5 billion in revenue for the 2010 fiscal year, while Activision and EA brought in approximately $4.5 billion and $3.5 billion. Adding another $2+ billion dollars to the annual revenue stream isn’t exactly an easy task, but Guillemot says that Ubisoft’s move from #25 to #3 was unlikely too, so anything’s possible.
According to Guillemot, Ubisoft will make strides with acquisitions, but primarily by focusing on games that will “make the difference and will be recognised as the best products in the industry.” One of these products will probably have to be an MMO, with Activison’s World of Warcraft generating somewhere around $1 billion in revenue per year, and EA’s Star Wars: The Old Republic aiming to do the same. If Guillemot’s words ring true, we should expect some major moves from Ubisoft in the coming years.
Source: MCV
