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Vivendi Ousted as Ubisoft Investor as It Turns Its Eyes to China & Tencent - MMORPG.com News
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
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%.
Post edited by SBFord on
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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" ) .
Reporter: What's behind Blizzard success, and how do you make your gamers happy?
Blizzard Boss: Making gamers happy is not my concern, making money.. yes!
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."
Reporter: What's behind Blizzard success, and how do you make your gamers happy?
Blizzard Boss: Making gamers happy is not my concern, making money.. yes!
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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.
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.
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Did L1 keep the sub model in Korea? Or did that go F2P. Because L1 here stayed sub until it was shut down.
Crazkanuk
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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.
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.