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Ubisoft Aims For Number Two
GI.biz reports that French games maker Ubisoft is aiming to be the second-largest publisher by 2012. They obviously figure EA will retain it's top spot, but Ubisoft Montreal boss Yannis Mallat vows that the company will grow in the next five years. From the article: "Ubisoft Montreal was founded in 1997 and now employs more than 1000 members of staff. The studio is best known for producing titles in the Splinter Cell and Prince of Persia series, and hit the headlines earlier this year after clashing with EA Montreal over staff hirings. When asked if those problems have now been resolved, Mallat replied, 'I wouldn't say we had problems, actually; we had differences ... EA is a competitor and business is business, so sometimes we have competitors' relationships. I know Alain [Tascan, head of EA Montreal], he's someone I know and I respect, and we are now competitors as with A2M and as with Activision, and our relationships are as fine as they could be.'" How can they gain on EA when they've been overrun by bunnies?
Well the article does say 'The second biggest third-party publisher after Electronic Arts '.
Though how much of an advantage is being the first party publisher? Okay so you know your own system well (If you have decent internal communication) but you can't develop for any other system which reduces what you can do (Depending on how you count porting one 'game' to different systems...)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_publisher# Selected_video_game_publishers
Activision, followed by all 3 first party studios, and then Ubisoft.