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Ubisoft

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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 and Quebec City, Canada; Barcelona, Spain; Shanghai, China; North Carolina, USA; Düsseldorf, Germany; Sofia, Bulgaria; Bucharest, Romania; Casablanca, Morocco 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 Entertainment
Company typeS.A.
IndustryInteractive entertainment
Founded1986
Headquarters
Montreuil, Seine-Saint-Denis
,
France
Key people
Yves Guillemot, CEO
Yannis Mallat, CEO of Montreal Studio
Michel Ancel, Game Designer,
ProductsRainbow Six
Ghost Recon
Splinter Cell
Prince of Persia
Rayman
Myst
Brothers in Arms
Far Cry
Revenue€538 million sales FY2004-05
€41.4 million
€27.2 million FY 2004-05 (before goodwill amortization)
Total assets3,604,841,000 euro (2020) Edit this on Wikidata
Number of employees
over 3500, 1760 in production tasks at the 1/20/2005
Websitewww.ubi.com
www.ubisoftgroup.com

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. 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.

On March 2005 Ubisoft acquired MC2-Microïds (Microïds Canada) and integrated it into Ubisoft's Montreal studios.[1]

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.

On April 11, 2007, Ubisoft announced that it had acquired Sunflowers.[2]. Sunflowers are known for the popular Anno series.

Ubisoft Online games are known for having a number of online complications. In many of the recent games developed, such as Splinter Cell: Double Agent and Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter, players have had trouble connecting to games and get disconnected quite often. It has caused struggles and is what makes ubisoft frowned upon by many online players.

Starforce Controversy

Ubisoft had, for a time, used the controversial StarForce copy protection technology that installs drivers on a system and is suspected to cause some hardware problems and compatibility issues with certain operating systems, starting with the game Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, which was not compatible with Windows XP Professional x64 Edition for quite some time until a patch was released by the makers of StarForce.[3]

On April 14, 2006 Ubisoft confirmed that they would stop using Starforce on their games citing complaints from customers.[1]

PRegScheduler MFC Application

Ubisoft is known to install an application called "PRegScheduler MFC Application" as a file named "PowerReg Scheduler.exe" outside of its specified installation directories. PowerReg Scheduler.exe may show up as "PowerREGISTER" in your task list. It is a product registration application used by companies including Ubisoft, MicroProse, IOmega and PowerQuest (Partition Magic). This application is not installed to the user specified directories for a given Ubisoft product, rather it is placed directly in the Startup folder, which is a common tactic for rogue software such as spyware and malware. Examination of the programs properties shows the "Company Name" to be blank, even though the rest of the property information is available. This has caused many people to become alarmed that an unknown program by an unidentified company has been placed in their startup folder for unknown purpose.[4]

Upcoming games published by Ubisoft

2008

2007

Games developed/published by Ubisoft

Video game platforms

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

See also: Ubisoft Entertainment games

References

  1. ^ Ubisoft montréal enters into an agreement to aquire Microids Canada's development operations ubi.com
  2. ^ "Ubisoft Acquires SunFlowers, Anno Franchise". Gamasutra. April 11, 2007. Retrieved 2007-04-12.
  3. ^ StarForce website page about patch
  4. ^ Technical information on PRegScheduler
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