Vivendi Ousted as Ubisoft Investor as It Turns Its Eyes to China & Tencent - MMORPG.com News

SBFord

Vivendi Ousted as Ubisoft Investor as It Turns Its Eyes to China & Tencent - MMORPG.com News

VentureBeat's Jeff Grubb is reporting that Ubisoft will announce that Vivendi is out of its stock business once and for all with threats of a takeover finally ending. To do so, Ubisoft is buying back some of the $2.45B worth of Vivendi stock with the Guillemot Brothers SE picking up another pile. New investors are an odd pair with the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan snapping up some stock along with China's Tencent bringing home 5%.

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IceAge

$2.45M - Put a B out of M

Other then that, I don't know the current Vivendi strategy , but .. while I never really liked them, let's not forget that Blizzard it is what it is today, with the help of Vivendi ( read "with the help" and not "because" ) .

SlyLoK

Blizzard was pretty successful before vivendi weren't they...?

IceAge

SlyLoK said:

Blizzard was pretty successful before vivendi weren't they...?

Blizzard was (almost) always been "owned" .
" In 1994 the company became Chaos Studios, Inc., then Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. after being acquired by distributor Davidson & Associates."

"Blizzard has changed hands several times since then. Davidson was acquired along with Sierra On-Line by a company called CUC International in 1996. CUC then merged with a hotel, real-estate, and car-rental franchiser called HFS Corporation to form Cendant in 1997. In 1998 it became apparent that CUC had engaged in accounting fraud for years before the merger. Cendant's stock lost 80% of its value over the next six months in the ensuing widely discussed accounting scandal. The company sold its consumer software operations, Sierra On-line (which included Blizzard) to French publisher Havas in 1998, the same year Havas was purchased by Vivendi. Blizzard was part of the Vivendi Games group of Vivendi. In July 2008 Vivendi Games merged with Activision, using Blizzard's name in the resulting company, Activision Blizzard."

SlyLoK

Gotcha.

kitarad

This is like jumping from the jaws of a crocodile into the maws of a tiger.

SBFord

kitarad said:

This is like jumping from the jaws of a crocodile into the maws of a tiger.

Honestly, I think Tencent having its tentacles in so many game development companies is bad for gaming. 

cameltosis

This may sound bad, but I wish western gaming studios would continue to focus on western gamers and not set their sights on Asia. 

I know Asia is a massive market with tons of gamers so it is very appealing from a business point of view, but games are an art form and as such, cultural differences play a big role in the success or failure of a game. Western devs struggle to find success in Asia, and Asian devs struggle to find success in the west. 

So, if Ubisoft wants to start developing for Asia, it just means we in the west will get less of what we enjoy. To give a real world example, this is one of the reasons we ended up with F2P in the West. It is the preferred business model in Asia and western devs had to supply it. The cost/difficulty in maintaining 2 business models (sub in the west, f2p in the east) was too much and so we ended up with F2P everywhere. 

Kyleran

cameltosis said:

This may sound bad, but I wish western gaming studios would continue to focus on western gamers and not set their sights on Asia. 

I know Asia is a massive market with tons of gamers so it is very appealing from a business point of view, but games are an art form and as such, cultural differences play a big role in the success or failure of a game. Western devs struggle to find success in Asia, and Asian devs struggle to find success in the west. 

So, if Ubisoft wants to start developing for Asia, it just means we in the west will get less of what we enjoy. To give a real world example, this is one of the reasons we ended up with F2P in the West. It is the preferred business model in Asia and western devs had to supply it. The cost/difficulty in maintaining 2 business models (sub in the west, f2p in the east) was too much and so we ended up with F2P everywhere. 

Actually I think the reason developers started offering alternatives such as F2P was mostly because players in the west stopped paying for subs over the long term.

Look at ESO, started of as box purchase with sub and suffered a huge drop in subs within 6 months.  Once they made the conversion along with the console launch they appear to have recovered nicely.

Same thing happened to SWTOR, TSW and some others.

Only FFXIV, Lineage 1 (two eastern games ironically) and WOW (and EVE on a smaller scale) have really managed to keep the sub model going strong.

All 4 of those games offer a unique experience which some players really desire, be it IP, design, or being part of the biggest which differentiates them enough to encourage players to pay a sub despite the plethora of available alternatives.

Panther2103

Kyleran said:

cameltosis said:

This may sound bad, but I wish western gaming studios would continue to focus on western gamers and not set their sights on Asia. 

I know Asia is a massive market with tons of gamers so it is very appealing from a business point of view, but games are an art form and as such, cultural differences play a big role in the success or failure of a game. Western devs struggle to find success in Asia, and Asian devs struggle to find success in the west. 

So, if Ubisoft wants to start developing for Asia, it just means we in the west will get less of what we enjoy. To give a real world example, this is one of the reasons we ended up with F2P in the West. It is the preferred business model in Asia and western devs had to supply it. The cost/difficulty in maintaining 2 business models (sub in the west, f2p in the east) was too much and so we ended up with F2P everywhere. 

Actually I think the reason developers started offering alternatives such as F2P was mostly because players in the west stopped paying for subs over the long term.

Look at ESO, started of as box purchase with sub and suffered a huge drop in subs within 6 months.  Once they made the conversion along with the console launch they appear to have recovered nicely.

Same thing happened to SWTOR, TSW and some others.

Only FFXIV, Lineage 1 (two eastern games ironically) and WOW (and EVE on a smaller scale) have really managed to keep the sub model going strong.

All 4 of those games offer a unique experience which some players really desire, be it IP, design, or being part of the biggest which differentiates them enough to encourage players to pay a sub despite the plethora of available alternatives.

Did L1 keep the sub model in Korea? Or did that go F2P. Because L1 here stayed sub until it was shut down.

CrazKanuk

Kyleran said:

cameltosis said:

This may sound bad, but I wish western gaming studios would continue to focus on western gamers and not set their sights on Asia. 

I know Asia is a massive market with tons of gamers so it is very appealing from a business point of view, but games are an art form and as such, cultural differences play a big role in the success or failure of a game. Western devs struggle to find success in Asia, and Asian devs struggle to find success in the west. 

So, if Ubisoft wants to start developing for Asia, it just means we in the west will get less of what we enjoy. To give a real world example, this is one of the reasons we ended up with F2P in the West. It is the preferred business model in Asia and western devs had to supply it. The cost/difficulty in maintaining 2 business models (sub in the west, f2p in the east) was too much and so we ended up with F2P everywhere. 

Actually I think the reason developers started offering alternatives such as F2P was mostly because players in the west stopped paying for subs over the long term.

Look at ESO, started of as box purchase with sub and suffered a huge drop in subs within 6 months.  Once they made the conversion along with the console launch they appear to have recovered nicely.

Same thing happened to SWTOR, TSW and some others.

Only FFXIV, Lineage 1 (two eastern games ironically) and WOW (and EVE on a smaller scale) have really managed to keep the sub model going strong.

All 4 of those games offer a unique experience which some players really desire, be it IP, design, or being part of the biggest which differentiates them enough to encourage players to pay a sub despite the plethora of available alternatives.

Totally agree. Furthermore, though, I think that the North American culture is at a point where people can't even fathom the idea of paying a subscription for a game. Shoot, I look at how much hate things like PS+ and XBox Gold get. There is plenty of backlash against those services because you MUST have them in order to play most online games on console. BUT! In addition to that, they also give you free games every month. Free games that, at the end of the year, are probably worth 5 or 6 times what you pay in subscription fees.... yet complaining is still a thing. 

Then, let's not even get started on the whole loot box debate. 

So the expectation in the North American market is charge me once, and never again, but I want my game to stay online forever. 

Then we look at the Asian market. Not only do they NOT complain about paying money for games, it's almost expected that they will pay for in-game items. Oh, AND the average Asian user spends the more on in-game items or in-app purchases than any other demographic in the world. 

So I think that there is a definite difference in how in-game and in-app purchases are perceived around the world, but Asia is really the only one who openly accepts it and embraces it. 

cameltosis

Kyleran said:

cameltosis said:

This may sound bad, but I wish western gaming studios would continue to focus on western gamers and not set their sights on Asia. 

I know Asia is a massive market with tons of gamers so it is very appealing from a business point of view, but games are an art form and as such, cultural differences play a big role in the success or failure of a game. Western devs struggle to find success in Asia, and Asian devs struggle to find success in the west. 

So, if Ubisoft wants to start developing for Asia, it just means we in the west will get less of what we enjoy. To give a real world example, this is one of the reasons we ended up with F2P in the West. It is the preferred business model in Asia and western devs had to supply it. The cost/difficulty in maintaining 2 business models (sub in the west, f2p in the east) was too much and so we ended up with F2P everywhere. 

Actually I think the reason developers started offering alternatives such as F2P was mostly because players in the west stopped paying for subs over the long term.

Look at ESO, started of as box purchase with sub and suffered a huge drop in subs within 6 months.  Once they made the conversion along with the console launch they appear to have recovered nicely.

Same thing happened to SWTOR, TSW and some others.

Only FFXIV, Lineage 1 (two eastern games ironically) and WOW (and EVE on a smaller scale) have really managed to keep the sub model going strong.

All 4 of those games offer a unique experience which some players really desire, be it IP, design, or being part of the biggest which differentiates them enough to encourage players to pay a sub despite the plethora of available alternatives.

That has certainly become the reason, but it wasn't the original reason. 

I remember Turbine specifically stating that maintaining two business models for the same game was prohibitive. I think Blizzard said something similar when they removed paid-for-time in Asia (though thats a case of a dev siding with the west, rather than the east). 


Admittedly, in a very short period of time the West has now culturally come to expect things for free and are unwilling to pay subscriptions (though, I challenge this theory). I think this cultural shift has come from three main sources:

• Mobile Apps - smartphones entered the market in 2007 and very quickly adopted a F2P business model due to quick oversaturation
• Social Networking - great technology given to us for free
• Google - android plus search all being offered for free

These three things are what we all tend to use every single day of our lives and we get the overwhelming majority of it for free. This expectation of technology for free has bled over into gaming. The major difference is these other major technologies are paid for via advertising, but that isn't the case with mainstream gaming. 


I actually think that we in the west are still very comfortable with the idea of subscriptions. We happily pay it for phone contracts, for cable/satellite tv, for our music and now for film/tv on demand.  

The major difference is flexibility. When I subscribe to Netflix, I get a massive choice of what I actually watch. When I subscribe to Spotify, I get millions of songs to play. With a phone contract, I can call or text anyone I want. 

When it comes to games.....one subscription to one game at a time......no flexibility. There are some services that are starting to get there. PSN and Xbox Live now offer free games along with the core service. EA's Origin Access offers a wide(ish) variety of games. These subscriptions to gaming services are gaining in popularity. 


What I'd like to see is someone develop something similar for MMORPGs. Some sort of unified login/account management that then gives you access to a wide variety of MMOs. Pay £20 a month and you can play WoW, SW:TOR, EVE, FFXIV, ESO, LotRO, AoC, BDO, AA and whatever else we can get on there. Get rid of the cash shops and share out the money based on playtime. I'd like to think that the majority of western gamers would be comfortable with that sort of setup. Maybe have a £5 per month option that limits you to one game for those new to the genre, or maybe a £50 signup fee to cover some of the box sales money. 

MasterDCT

Personally, I think this is the mindset of NA gamers: "I want the game to be Free to Play, I don't want to pay anything for the cash shop items (or in game purchases) to fully enjoy the game, and I want the game to release new free updates and keep running forever." Nothing is free guys, if it is free, something is wrong with it. How could the company keep going without any financial support from the players? The sad state of the online games we have now is partially due to the players expecting everything free and of high quality.

Taking a look at a few games like FF XIV and WoW where people pay subs, or B2P such as ESO and GW2, the games release new updates often and still keep going strong. Even game with people whining all the time about "Pay to Win" aspect like BDO, with that cash flow, the game constantly gives players new contents. I remember when Bless announced that there would be boost items in the cash shop, people are whining already without knowing what the boosts actually are. Many players would not want to pay for anything in game and do not want people to do it so they could have an edge over them. Remember, the game (publisher or developers) do not owe you and you do not owe them anything, therefore they are not obligated to give you free stuff (which they often do) and you can stop playing anytime you want.