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Infogrames Could Help Ubisoft vs. EA
GamesIndustry.biz iz reporting that in a show of European solidarity publisher Infogrames may assist Ubisoft (with the blessings of the French Government) if EA attempts a hostile takeover of the Prince of Persia developer. From the article: "Speaking to news agency Reuters, Bonnell expressed his hope that Ubisoft will remain independent - and rubbished EA's claim that its recent purchase of almost 20 per cent of the firm's stock was merely an investment." Further details on Greg Costikyan's Blog. All this is follow up to year-end shenanigans from EA.
I guess that means the EA cafeteria will be selling "Freedom Fries"
From Penny Arcade to EA:
PA: How do you respond to rumors that you are the fucking devil?
EA: EA does not comment on rumors.
Sorry, I couldn't rezizt commenting on thiz. I'm here all week.
aterr - an open source threaded discussion board.
France stands up to aggression! Film at eleven.
Jordan Mechner has been kidnapped by unknown hostile assailants. A video released by his captors show him working 90 hour weeks at gunpoint in an unidentified office. Police suspect foul play.
Unknown host pong.
Who the hell is Greg Costikyan and why is his blog a good source of information? It's called "context", folks. Before I read any of the linked text, I should know the basics about what's going on, who Ubisoft is, and who Costikyan is.
I'm getting sick and tired of reading writeups and being left to discern all of the information on my own. If you're going to claim to post news articles with information in them, you're going to have to actually provide some information.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
All Slashdotters from this day forward should boycott all EA produced software.
What, by not downloading those torrents?
Trolling is a art,
I already do. I have some of their titles, but they were all bought a while ago - and all were purchased off the used shelf.
My money has spoken.
"A revolution without dancing is... a revolution not worth having"
I read this morning here (in french, sorry!) that it was Vivendi Universal Games which was supposed to help Ubisoft....
/. I trust ..." :D
But "In
Yeah, I've been boycotting EA ever since the days of the ill-fated Sega Dreamcast. Not that it's stopped them. All this new stuff (UBISoft, the NFL deal) just adds fuel to an already big fire.
Didn't Infogrames change their name to Atari? http://www.atari.com/
Insert Pithy Quote here.
How exactly are they going to stand up to EA? They can't even figure out how to spell "Games"!
I was gonna make a joke about France, but frankly...
I tried for 5 years to come up with a clever sig...only to realize that I am not clever.
What can Infogrames do except buy enough of Ubisoft to control it entirely or at least deny EA a controlling stake? Either way, this offer of help doesn't exactly sound like charity.
Is there any place on the web where we can get capitalization information and statistics on foreign companies? Both Infogrames and Ubisoft are public, but neither has stock listed in the Americas and I can't seem to find info like floats, capitalizations, insider/institutional holdings, amount of cash available, etc. EA's a pretty big company sitting on a pretty fat wallet (to the tune of 2.5B in cash).
~Someday, I hope to be an aspiring author.
These constant anti-French comments are pathetic. One of your country's oldest allies is hestitant about giving you carte blanche to invade other sovereign states and all of a sudden it's open season on France?
The whole "let's declare war on anything associated with the word 'french' in it" is just pathetic. Really, it just is so petty and ridiculous that it borders on infantile: are freedom fries any tastier than french fries? No? I didn't think so.
Grow up. It's shit like this that has cost you the almost all of international support and goodwill that was apparent in the aftermath of September 11th.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Vivendi to help Ubi . And has more financial resources to do it.
Everytime I see Infogrames, I can't help but wonder whether someone screwed up when they registered the company Infogames.
"Hey Bob, can you take a look at the incorporation documents? What's with the 'R' in the company name?"
"Ohhh...... fuck."
It's quite simple, Infogames will turn off the lights and EA will be eaten by a GRUE!
IGB: More fun than eating oatmeal!
When I go to a restaurant that has freedom fries on the menu I typically ask them, "Could I have French fries instead of the freedom fries? Freedom fries leave a bad taste in my mouth."
I do the same thing for French toast also.
END OF LINE
Our secondary education system, as a whole, leaves much to be desired. Most Americans know less of American history than recent immigrants. Forgive the ignorant, for they know not what they post to slashdot.
Let's get drunk and delete production data!
Every government does this, so whats your point. You might want to whine about your own government befor pointing the finger at others.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
I am a Brit.
;)
And
The French government really don't seem interested in that.
Thank you for providing some shred of evidence that improper English grammar is not the sole province of the United States.
Sorry, I mean no offense.
Thanks to the internet, we can now all die alone together! -SomeWoman
"France is huge, what can you do? Throw 'em out of Europe? hardly!"
No need to throw them out of Europe. Just march on Paris...apparently that's been proven a feasible task.
why so many people seem to be happy that EA may not get Ubisoft. If it's because you think EA makes crappy games, and will make Ubisoft make crappy games, then ok I get it.
But there are you others. You seem to be assigning a sense of romanticism here, as though EA were attempting to defile the virtue of Ubisoft. What the hell is wrong with you people?
Renault
Hmm, are you sure this is a positive thing? (I kid, I kid...)
When you look at the state of the world, how can you not become a radical, liberal anarchist?
German law prohibits any foreign entity from gaining a controlling interest in Volkswagen.
Foreign airlines are prohibited from flying between US cities.
Japan makes bogus claims to turn away shipments of US vehicles.
It's not just France.
-mkb
I love how everything that is critical (no matter how just the claims are and how well they are written) gets modded down here. And then we get +5 funny "in soviet korea" garbage. :P
When you look at the state of the world, how can you not become a radical, liberal anarchist?
Regardless of the merits of EA's Ubisoft non/takeover actions, it should now be obvious that all of that "EA slave labor" scandal in the media the past few months was just propaganda in their takeover war. Regardless of the merits of those labor complaints, we would never have heard about them if there weren't a large equity transaction in the works. EA is hardly a unique taskmaster, especially in the gaming industry (as we heard in the squabbles). But their international ambitions are important enough to draw the attention of the corporate media. Mere slave labor falls far below that threshold.
--
make install -not war
Fire? If they hostile take over a new company everyday, it'll be a nuclear catastrophe of biblical proportion.
One of your country's oldest allies is hestitant about giving you carte blanche to invade other sovereign states and all of a sudden it's open season on France?
huh? Americans have been making fun of the French for decades...
One man's Funny is another man's Offtopic.
Guess who is helping the US most in Afghanistan? And who was the first leader to visit New York in the aftermath of 09/11 ? (hint: his first name is Jacques).
Comparing lists as you suggest is not a correct way of handling relationships between such two long-lasting allies.
The reason why the French are so upset about the USA is that they wasted the vast amount of sympathy they gained after 09/11 by engaging into a so called "war on terrorism" that rather looks like a struggle to safeguard their own interests (oil, dollar...). The reason why the USA are so upset about France is because they tried to make the UN prevail above these interests. Please stop watching Fox News and get some real information.
A little Googling shows that Ubisoft has facilities in several countries and actually purchased two U.S. studios (RedStorm and Game Studio) in 2000-01.
It appears that they've been a part of the general consolidation in the games industry as well.
I also have to wonder whether the Feds and/or the EU would allow an outright takeover in the first place, given the antitrust implications.
There is no mention anywhere of subsidizing Infogrames. Anyway each and every government on earth "subsidizes" various economic sectors and corporations as they see fit. Direct subsidies are outlawed by various trade pacts and international treaties, but there are many holes in those and many other indirect ways for a government to weight in on an economic sector if it think this is strategically useful.
The US federal government does a lot of this, sometimes directly through subsidies (for example, the agriculture), through pork barrel programs, often of military nature (how many billions have the useless NMD poured into Boeing's and Lockheed's R&D depts ?), often through corporate wellfare, such as the Foreign Sales tax breaks that have been recently outlawed by the WTO, sometimes through tarriffs, for example on steel, which were also outlawed by the WTO, but lasted just enough for the American mills to restructure and survive until the explosion of Asian demand for steel, or the on Canadian lumber. The tax deduction of mortgage interest and the "soft sponsoring" of Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac correspond to an effective subsidizing of the residential real-estate sector, etc...
Your US Airways example is bad, because the US has precisely massively, if indirectly, subsidized airlines after 9/11, in a manner that has drawn numerous complaints from Europe.
A truce: We'll import your unpasteurized cheeses, and you'll stamp little (up, eh?, or down) thumb symbols on your wine that you export to us. Maybe we can agree to start smoking again, and you'll stop trying to export Renaults.
the more accurate the calculations became, the more the concepts tended to vanish into thin air. R. S. Mulliken
Look Infogra.. *cough*, Atari is having enough problems with their finances as it is. This mildly annoys me, since I happen to have some of their stock in my portfolio (still waiting for it to break even).
They have to postpone a shareholder meeting because they can't get a quorum to vote on their bonds that are due this upcoming July, and now they want to give money away just to float another company? Yeesh! so much for a recovery...
Crikey!
I can't deny the first two!
The last should have read "doesn't"..
My grammar is at best average - my grammar on the 'net is below than average...
Th worrying thing is that I remain better than a lot...
It's not just the USA that hates the French. The rest of the world does too
"It's not just the French that hates the USA. The rest of the world does too" is an equally valid statement.
... with alarming regularity.
I'm not a fan of EA's business tactics, far from it, but this has happened to all sorts of US companies, and foreign governments protect their markets from the same happening to their companies (see: Japan).
I don't see why US companies should not buy foreign ones.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
And what pissant insignificant country do you hail from?
Oh, right it doesn't matter anyway.
In English, it is correct to regard corporations, governments, etc. as plural nouns. So: "The French government aren't...", "My bank are incompetent...", etc.
It's incorrect in Yankese, probably because your legal system pretends that companies are people. Hint: they aren't, they're just a group of human beings and a bunch of legal documents.
I'd just like to state, as someone who's older than three years of age, that we hated the French long before September 11th, 2001.
That is all, frog-lover!
Actually with first "dig" came from A European. Just look at the earlier comments:) Quote And people wonder why the EU is weak? (Score:0, Offtopic) by boringgit (721801) on Wednesday January 05, @04:50PM (#11268987) (http://www.by-users.co.uk/) I am a Brit - as such I am European - fine - Eupope great - USA not quite so great. Unquote
First, as far as I know, the French government's help to Ubi Soft is limited to allowing Ubi to buy back shares rather than explicit.
Second, I'm sure there are plenty more examples of corporate welfare by governments. It does strike me as peculiar that France is doing a lot to bail out a video game publisher when there are other, larger French companies that are owned in large chunks by foreigners. (STMicroelectronics, for example)
-mkb
Actually, the US needed Imperial France - the France of the Louis'. The French aristocracy helped us, and that wasn't altruism - it was sticking a finger in Britain's eye.
Revolutionary France, Napoleonic France, Republican France - I can't think of a lot of good they have been for the US.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Good job. I've not bought an EA game since they refused to make titles for a system that hasn't proved itself, yet pledged support for a piece of paper with specs on it.
You bring up "pork barrel programs" in this context as if it is somehow related to subsidizing things, when it is not. Pork barreling is, simplistically speaking, the process of saying "sure, Ill vote for your program/bill/sugestion if you vote for mine". I guess that on some meta level that could be seen as political subsidizing of another political view, but I'm guessing that is not what you meant.
Karma: 2.71828182846 (Mostly due to small, fun pills)
The French government has decided that videogames are an artform, so this is more in the way of artistic patronage than corporate welfare. Maybe. I'm fairly sure that the French government has gotten in more trouble from the EU for protectionism and subsidies to French companies .
And USA poisoned chilean grapes, to protect their local grape productors.
Everybody is protectionist. USA the first of them.
It's shit like this that has cost you the almost all of international support and goodwill that was apparent in the aftermath of September 11th.
I can only assume your post is a troll, but I'll bite only cause its fun...
So we should be grateful over temporary goodwill "earned" out of the aftermath of an international tragedy? And a few silly comments on a message board are enough to burn that up? All the while Chirac envisioning France and Europe as a counterweight to America? Doesn't sound like there was much support or goodwill to begin with. You grow up. Look back through history, France has only supported America when if futher supported French interests. And no matter when France might have been our ally in the past, they are no longer. They see themselves as a counter to America. Doesn't sound like an ally to me.
Ridicule the cheese-eating surrender monkeys at will Americans. They are doing it to you on French message boards. Je promets.
See, a government operates for the bigger benefit of the people by whom it has been elected (in theory, at least). Big US Company buys out French company possibly to eliminate competition - jobs, national pride, and the sum value produced by the nation are hurt. Intervention by state on many-many levels of the economy has a loooong history - in that case, it protects against negative foreign influence.
Now I appreciate the idea of free trade - on a microeconomical level It Just Works. But when it's about uneven odds (Microsoft trying to take over my garage company, for example :)) or foreign influence, we elected the government to step right in and say "no".
You know Lee Iacocca, the topmanager? He wrote a nice book about his life in the 80's (?). He has a rather interesting rant about exactly that problem - in his time, the US government did not protect the american auto industry from japanese cars while the japanese did this with ridiculous import taxes. All of this because "free trade".
So yes, there are cases when I'm happy that the government intervenes - God knows that it should do it more frequently in my country (which is not the US, mind you). As it is now the Germans own our collective as... backwards parts. But that's our trouble, certainly :)
Anyway, this was only my opinion.
How about you call 'em chips like we do in Oz. It avoids all sorts of cultural problems!
EA has the money to "invest" in Ubisoft because they are STEALING from their employees. Uncompensated work is criminal.
Fuck EA.
No, we hate the French because they're weasels, cowards and opportunistic a**holes who feel the only way to build their country up again is to tear the U.S. down. What other Western country is actively anti-American, and can be expected to oppose the U.S. no matter who controls the government- socialist, communist, Gaullist, National Front crypto-fascist?
Which country's foreign minister poses as champion of international law, yet is really a degenerate Napoleonic power worshipper who still thinks warfare is glorious- as long as it's France that's kicking butts?
Interesting argument. I would mod this AC as interesting.
The AC points out that neither France nor the USA are saints. That the USA is not a saint, the Iraq invasion + DoD Contractors & Oil Exploration Companies Profit Statements + George W. "Bully"'s line of talk already proved. AC reminds us France may try to look more rightful, but that its own actions are really not that consistent with the pose.
Here on my side, what I fear is a time when people in the US, in France, and everywhere lose the pretension of being morally right. People becoming unashamed of saying "we did it because we can, screw what you think".
Even if I know no country's government should be expected to be very rightful, I really, really hope the powerful countries will seek to restrain themselves and act with reflection and wisdom (and I am not talking to GWB). And I hope I can trust on each country's public opinion to seek *within* his/her own country what may be wrong. And denounce. And influence. And correct.
Yours truly, speaking from humble South America (aka "notUSA" and "notEurope", aka periphery of the world, aka not-a-perfect-government-place-either).
Quem a paca cara compra, paca cara pagará.
The difference is that from the original Atari, through Warner-ownership, to the Tramiel era, there was continuity. It changed over time, but there was always a connection; the product-line and staff didn't disappear overnight (though, of course, the arcade division, Atari Games, wasn't sold to the Tramiels).
I don't know the details of the JTS deal (and I'm too tired to check it up), but I suspect it had more to do with patents and the like; Atari Corp's computer and games businesses were all but extinct by that time (the Jaguar was a clear failure by that stage- let's face it, if it hadn't been a success with its headstart over the technically superior PS and Saturn, it wasn't going to do it now- and had diverted Atari's resources away from the Falcon and the Lynx- in short, there was nothing worth speaking of left). Even when the merger news broke, I made a comment somewhere that "Atari are dead". *That* was the break in continuity, where any remnants of the 'true' original Atari finally expired.
At any rate, I recall *nothing* from the JTS-era 'Atari'; next I heard was that Hasbro had the name, but rights aside (and didn't the rights to those 'classic' games reside with the now separate "Atari Games", owned by Midway?) there was no connection with the 'old' Atari.
The Infogrames 'Atari' is a name, no more. I don't mind that, I just wish they'd quit screwing around with the logo and revert to the classic design (I've already ranted about this, though).
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Free markets fail when monopolies are built. That's why we have regulation. Consumers are important private entities too, and the government needs to look out for their best interests.
In addition all foreign trucks operating in the US must be shipping to or from another country (US or Mexico). You cannot, for example, take Potatos from Saskatoon Canada to New York; and then take apples to New Jersey. This makes sense though, because at this point you are working inside the United States without a work license, effectively.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
During WWI, sauerkraut was called Liberty Cabbage. Also, German was the 2nd language of the USA until WWI. We have a very large population of German extraction (we also have some 40+ million Irish), so that makes sense even though I was surprised to learn it (History of the English Language class my advisor duped me into taking (I am an English major even if Slashdot posts don't get that across)).
In a restaurant in Wildwood, NJ, I did this.
They refused to serve them to me.
Now to play troll/devil's advocate!
"One of your country's oldest allies"
One of our oldest enemies as well. We weren't too keen on this, either. Also, interestingly enough, French aggression in the Pacific caused King Kamehameha III of Hawaii to pursue US statehood in the 1850's. I'm sure I can find other examples of France moving counter to US desires (to say the least) if I felt like digging around more.
If Zimmerman hadn't screwed up and if the sinking of the Lusitania hadn't made such good copy, it's quite possible we might have entered the Great War on the side of the Germans.
"and all of a sudden it's open season on France?"
US animosity towards France goes back at least as far as the De Gaulle presidency. Not really "sudden" at all.
"has cost you the almost all of international support and goodwill"
Personally, I've never been particularly fond of being pitied.
In germany I saw them sold as "Nederlandse frites" (dutch fries). I don't think the Belgians call them "french fries" either :-)
Another example would be Zenith data systems.
They used to be a major supplier of PCs for the US administrations.
Then, they were bought by Bull, a french company.
Curiously, US administrations then switched to another supplier.
Not to say I blame the US for doing these kind of things, the point is that governments stepping up to protect the national industries happens in every country, not just france.
failure of vision Ergo most of "you guys" seem to think that the UK fought the US in the 2WW. Take this as sarcasm or flamebait, but it seems incontrovertible - demonstrated daily on slashdot - that USAians in general just don't care about the "broad sweep of history". Particularly, I guess, if you're a blue stater.
I think there should be some intervention in the UbiSoft (Go Marianne!) v EA (boo sucks Uncle Sam) to stop a monopoly of the "market". But then, Americans, for all their free-market bluster, have the occasional wobbly over this cf Microsoft. Who's to say that George W Bush won't turn a blind to this "conflict" whilst those uber-federalists EUians will levy fines on such a merger.
h
Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious
That is not at all the point, ok it is for France, but for most people here it is because they distrust EA, I would be evenly uneasy about simular actions towards Activision or id Software.
You lift one fact of this situation and asume it is the major point of discusion, where as the main reason people get uneasy about this whole happening is the involvement of EA.
If, lets say, Take Two was the one purchasing UbiSoft stock, the whole thing would be much less of a "problem". On the other hand I think they would have anounced there plans beforehand.
to MicrEAsoft
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
Step 1: Takeover of company
Step 2: Every developer leave
Step 3: Developers incorporate under new company.
Step 4: New company starts another product with help
of the old customer base.
Fucktard. America is far from the majority. Let's see, 293 million or so, compared to a world population of 6.4 billion. China and India together have almost half of the world population, so screw your thought that you're the fucking majority.
Christopher S. 'coldacid' Charabaruk -- coldacid.net
If the French were really the cheese-eating surrender monkeys everyone takes them for, then why did they bother to resist Washington over middle-east issues? Similarily, don't forget that during WW2, the French had a very strong underground movement to screw over the Nazis.
Christopher S. 'coldacid' Charabaruk -- coldacid.net
They helped us start our country. We saved their hindparts in WWII. What we need is mutual respect and support.
"Sometimes it takes more than an axe and a busload of strangers to work through your anger." -Rikk Estoban
That's very true. Similarily, that's what we Canadians need with you Americans... There's more than enough of us making fun of you guys behind your backs, and I'm certain it's the same the other way around.
:D
"Can't we all just... get along?"
Christopher S. 'coldacid' Charabaruk -- coldacid.net