The global epidemic of the epidemic has undoubtedly changed the entire world, and the most affected of them is not only the semiconductor industry, and the various "missing cores" derived from it, it is the game industry that has eaten many dividends. Therefore, since 2020, the mergers and acquisitions of the game industry have also turned a new page, and the various financiers wielding banknotes have made the industry undergo an unprecedented reshuffle.
After Bethesda's parent company ZeniMax Media and Activision Blizzard were "taken" by Microsoft for $8.1 billion and $68.7 billion, Sony spent $3.6 billion to pocket Bungie Studios, and R Star parent Take-Two used $12.7 billion to acquire social game developer Zynga, etc., billions of dollars and tens of billions of dollars in transactions in the past two years, players are also speculating about "who is next". The answer to this question seems to have come out a few days ago, with news suggesting that French gaming giant Ubisoft may be the next big game player to sell.
Recently, according to relevant reports from Bloomberg, Blackstone Inc., two well-known private investment companies in the United States, and Kohlberg-Kravis-Roberts Group (KKR), have contacted Ubisoft. According to the news, the current acquisition of Ubisoft is still in the early stage of evaluation, no one has proposed any formal acquisition price for the time being, and there are no acquisition negotiations. However, due to Ubisoft's recent collation of the books with the help of a third-party audit firm, it has also been interpreted as or is preparing for the sale. So after this news was exposed, Ubisoft's stock price also rose sharply by 15%.
As early as February this year, when Microsoft announced the acquisition of Activision Blizzard, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot said on the earnings call that Ubisoft could "remain independent" but would still review acquisition offers from other companies.
In fact, overseas game media kotaku revealed that in the recent kotaku and Ubisoft current and former senior developers, and even the head of the management department have had relevant communications, they have revealed that due to the continuous downturn in stock prices and the development difficulties of a number of new games, Ubisoft has confirmed that it will eventually be sold.
At present, Ubisoft is in a difficult situation, after its stock price reached a high of $110 in July 2018, it entered a downward channel, and even after this wave of surge, the stock price was only $42.62. The long-term stagnation of the stock price is widely believed to be caused by Ubisoft's "drifting". As early as March 2018, with the help of a bunch of outside investors such as Tencent, Ubisoft successfully got rid of Vivendi's entanglement and gained freedom.
But also from 2018, Ubisoft's AAA game production began to decline significantly, and at the same time, it added a layer of RPG shell on the basis of its own iconic "formulaic open world", and finally gave birth to a bunch of RPG-based pipeline open worlds. Presumably, many players have found that such as Assassin's Creed: Odyssey, The Division 2, Watch Dogs: Legion, etc., in recent years, Ubisoft's games have always had a very similar "taste" in addition to different IP. So much so that in the middle of last year, Ubisoft said it would reduce its dependence on AAA games and focus more on free + in-app F2P games.
However, in 2012 and 2017, Ubisoft looked completely different.
At that time, it was the time when Vivendi, who "scourgeed" Activision Blizzard, stared at Ubisoft, in order to get rid of this "disaster star", Ubisoft handed over its mobile game brand Gameloft on the one hand, on the other hand, it was desperately polishing the content in exchange for more sales, such as "Watchdog", "The Division", "Rainbow Six", "Glory Soul" and other IP were also born in this period.
It is undeniable that the formulaic open world of Ubisoft's characteristics has indeed been carried forward during this time, but it has also brought players more than 3 quality online AAA games per year, and has also brought a large user base for itself.
The result of Ubisoft's lack of ambition is that except for the three star studios in Montreal, Quebec and Massive, the ability of other studios to produce quality content has almost fallen to the bottom. Meanwhile, in May 2021, Charlie Guillemot, the son of Yves Guillemot, the current chairman and CEO of Ubisoft, left Ubisoft, leaving no member of the Guillemot family as the company's founder to take over. In the context of the decline in the competitiveness of the product market, the lack of successors from the family business, and the continuous loss of senior talent, it is also reasonable for Ubisoft to choose to sell.
Of course, as an old game giant, Ubisoft can still be said to be a skinny camel bigger than a horse. It owns well-known IPs such as Lehman, Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, Prince of Persia, Cell Splinter, Rainbow Six, Watch Dogs, The Division and Ghost Recon series, as well as self-developed engines Anvil and Snowdrop. And Ubisoft is also one of the few largest manufacturers with a global studio system, and its personnel reserves and technical accumulation can be said to be first-class in the industry.
So why wasn't it the game maker that bought Ubisoft? In fact, the reason is not difficult to guess, now Microsoft's headache may be how to integrate Activision Blizzard, Sony has just bought Bungie, Nintendo is more inclined to Japanese game manufacturers, Ubisoft's style is really not matched. As for the domestic Tencent, when Ubisoft expelled Vivendi, Tencent promised as a reinforcement not to transfer or increase its equity and voting rights, while NetEase, with a market value of more than 50 billion, has never had a multi-billion dollar merger and acquisition in the past history.
In fact, the reason why Blackstone Group and KKR Group are eyeing Ubisoft is also very simple, after this round of mergers and acquisitions in the game industry, there are not many independent brands in the market, and Ubisoft is the most prominent commercial performance. Therefore, it may be inevitable to take advantage of Microsoft and Sony's self-care to take advantage of themselves and sell them at a good price in the future.
So after Ubisoft, who will be next?
【The picture of this article comes from the network】