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Ubisoft Aims For Number Two

Posted by Zonk on from the way-to-aim-high dept.

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?

2 of 35 comments (clear)

  1. Number 2? by HappySqurriel · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Just as a question, why does no one ever consider Nintendo the top publisher?

    In 2006 Nintendo has sold 25,572,000 pieces of software in Japan (48% of all games sold), and 14,704,000 pieces of software in North America (20% of all games sold). EA has sold 16,693,000 pieces of software in North America and very few pieces of software ing Japan.

    Am I missing something, did EA publish 2 to 3 times as much software as Nintendo in the rest of the world or do people automatically discount first party publishers?

    1. Re:Number 2? by HappySqurriel · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I realize that this article is about Third Party publishers, but 90% of the time I see EA refered to as the "Largest Publisher in the World" and wonder whether people have access to statistics I don't have access to.

      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...)

      In general, being a first party publisher doesn't provide much of an advantage if you look at the market share of Sony, Microsoft and Sega (when they were still a first party publisher). I could be wrong, but I believe it was Sega who said something along the lines of "The biggest problem with releasing software on Nintendo's platforms is that you have to compete directly against Nintendo's software"; the implication of the statement was that only really good third party games sold well on Nintendo systems whereas an average game would sell well on the PS2/XBox.