Francais | English | Espanõl

Ubisoft

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search
Ubisoft Entertainment <tr><td colspan="2" style="text-align:center; padding:16px 0 16px 0;">
Ubisoft logo
</td></tr>
Type S.A.
Founded 1986
Headquarters Image:Flag of France.svg Montreuil, Seine-Saint-Denis, France

<tr><th style="text-align:right; padding-right:0.75em;">Key people</th><td>Yves Guillemot, CEO
Yannis Mallat, CEO of Montreal Studio
Michel Ancel, Game Designer</td></tr><tr><th style="text-align:right; padding-right:0.75em;">Industry</th><td>Interactive entertainment</td></tr><tr><th style="text-align:right; padding-right:0.75em;">Products</th><td>FarCry
Ghost Recon
Rainbow Six
Brothers in Arms
Myst
Prince of Persia
Rayman
Splinter Cell
Red Steel</td></tr><tr><th style="text-align:right; padding-right:0.75em;">Revenue</th><td>€538 million sales FY2004-05</td></tr><tr><th style="text-align:right; padding-right:0.75em;">Operating income</th><td>€41.4 million</td></tr><tr><th style="text-align:right; padding-right:0.75em;">Net income</th><td>€27.2 million FY 2004-05 (before goodwill amortization)</td></tr><tr><th style="text-align:right; padding-right:0.75em;">Employees</th><td>over 3500, 1760 in production tasks at the 1/20/2005</td></tr><tr><th style="text-align:right; padding-right:0.75em;">Website</th><td>www.ubi.com
www.ubisoftgroup.com</td></tr>

Ubisoft Entertainment (formerly Ubi Soft) is a computer and video game publisher and developer with headquarters in Montreuil, France. The company has facilities in over 20 countries, including development studios in Montreal, Canada; Barcelona, Spain; Shanghai, China; North Carolina, USA; Düsseldorf, Bulgaria, Germany; and Milan, Italy, amongst other locations. As of 2004, it is the third-largest independent video game publisher in Europe, and the seventh largest in the US. The "Ubi" in Ubisoft is sometimes pronounced [juːbi] or more often [u'bi], in French it is pronounced [y'bi]. (See IPA phonetic notation.)

Ubisoft's mascot is Rayman.

Contents

[edit] History

The five brothers of the Guillemot family founded Ubisoft as a computer game publisher in 1986 in France. Yves Guillemot soon made deals with Electronic Arts, Sierra On-Line, and Microprose to distribute their games in France. By the end of the decade, Ubisoft began expanding to other markets, including the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany.

In the early 1990s, Ubisoft initiated its in-house game development program which led to the 1994 opening of a studio in Montreuil, France, which later became their headquarters. That same year, Michel Ancel created the Rayman character, a character which still stars in new video games as of 2006. Ubisoft became a publicly traded company in 1996 and continued to expand to offices around the globe, opening locations in Shanghai and Montreal.

In 2000, Ubisoft acquired US-based Red Storm Entertainment, the game development studio founded by techno-spy novelist Tom Clancy, famous for games based on Clancy's books. In 2001, the company purchased Blue Byte Software, known for the Settlers series. By 2003, Ubisoft reported operations in 22 countries, nine of those containing production or design offices. Ubisoft had a number of successful and award-winning games that year, including Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, XIII, Rayman 3, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield and Beyond Good & Evil.

Ubisoft's revenue for 2002-2003 was €453 million; for fiscal year 2003-2004, this grew to €508 million. As of 2004, Ubisoft employs more than 2,350 people, of which over 1700 are classed as working in production. Yves Guillemot, a founding brother, is the chairman and CEO.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Ubisoft committed itself to online games by getting behind Uru: Ages Beyond Myst, The Matrix Online, and the European and Chinese operation of EverQuest. The publisher established ubi.com as its online division. But in February 2004, Ubisoft cancelled the online portion of Uru and backed out of the publishing deal on The Matrix Online. Regardless, only a week later the company announced its acquisition of Wolfpack Studios, developers of fantasy MMORPG Shadowbane, and in July 2004, its Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow was released for the Xbox and PlayStation 2 with what some considered a revolutionary online multiplayer feature.

On December 20, 2004 Electronic Arts (EA) purchased a 19.9% stake in the firm. At the time, Ubisoft released a statement saying they considered the purchase "hostile" until they had further information on EA's intent.

Ubisoft also bought the Driver franchise from Atari in July 2006, for a sum of €19 million (USD$24 million) in cash for the franchise, technology rights, and most assets. Additionally, though Ubisoft is not acquiring the studio outright, the 80 members of Driver developer Reflections Interactive will become employees of Ubisoft.

[edit] Starforce Controversy

Ubisoft is known to use Starforce copy protection that installs drivers on a system and is suspected to cause problems with some hardware and compatibility issues with certain operating systems, starting with the game Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory which as of the time of writing (February 2nd 2006) is not compatible with Windows XP Professional x64 Edition On April 14, 2006 Ubisoft confirmed that they will stop using Starforce on their games citing complaints from the customers.[1]

[edit] Upcoming games published by Ubisoft

[edit] Games developed/published by Ubisoft

Platform Key
PC Windows-based PC
Xbox Microsoft Xbox
GC Nintendo GameCube
PS2 Sony PlayStation 2
PSP Sony PlayStation Portable
DS Nintendo DS
GBA Nintendo Game Boy Advance
GBC Nintendo Game Boy Color
GB Nintendo Game Boy
PS1 Sony PlayStation
DC Sega Dreamcast
Mac Apple Macintosh PC

This is a partial list of games developed and/or published by Ubisoft.

See also: Ubisoft Entertainment games

[edit] External links

es:Ubisoft fr:Ubisoft gl:Ubisoft it:Ubisoft nl:Ubisoft ja:ユービーアイソフト pl:Ubisoft pt:Ubisoft fi:Ubisoft sv:Ubisoft zh:育碧软件

Retrieved from "http://en.wikivisual.com/index.php/Ubisoft"
Personal tools