According to a new Bloomberg story, Ubisoft could be the next big publisher targeted for sale. Several private equity groups, including Blackstone Inc. and KKR & Co., have been analyzing the Ubisoft business, according to Bloomberg’s sources.
However, Ubisoft has yet to embark on any negotiations, and it’s not even certain that the company’s majority shareholder, Yves Guillemot, and his family, would be interested in selling. According to Kotaku, the company, on the other hand, has lately cleaned up its finances with the help of outside auditing firms. This may be an indication that Ubisoft is getting ready to sell.
The falling stock price is encouraging buyers. While Ubisoft shares are up 4.74 percent today (presumably due to these reports), the company has dropped over 40% in the last year, resulting in a market capitalization of €4.8 billion. Other potential suitors include Microsoft and Sony, even though the former is now undergoing regulatory investigation for its large acquisition of Activision Blizzard, while the latter is concluding its acquisition of Bungie. Both businesses’ acquisition sprees are certain to continue, and Ubisoft remains a sought-after target in the gaming industry.
Its release schedule isn’t entirely clear right now, but it does include a large number of projects in development, ranging from free-to-play games (The Division Heartland, XDefiant, Ghost Recon Frontline, Project Q) to mobile games (The Division Mobile, Rainbow Six Mobile, Assassin’s Creed Mobile), VR games (Assassin’s Creed VR, Splinter Cell VR), and, of course, many premium games (The Settlers, Prince of Persia: Sands of Time Remake, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, Assassin’s Creed Infinity, Skull and Bones, Beyond Good & Evil 2, Roller Champions, Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope, the untitled open-world Star Wars game, and the Splinter Cell Remake).
There are other unreleased but reported game projects, including Assassin’s Creed Rift, a sequel to Immortals: Fenix Rising, a new 2.5D Prince of Persia game being developed at Ubisoft Montpellier, and The Crew 3. In addition, Ubisoft is continuing to work on some live-service titles, including Rainbow Six: Siege, For Honor, The Division 2, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, and Rainbow Six: Extraction.
Ubisoft Scalar, a production tool that promises to harness cloud computing power to further increase the simulation capabilities of its game worlds, was also introduced at GDC 2022. Our conversation with Technical Director Christian Holmqvist may be found here.
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