I don’t want MS touching that trainwreck of publisher but even ignoring my bias, a Ubisoft acquisition wouldn’t make sense unless they’d be restructuring the entire company
Everything would have to stay multiplat because profits are unfeasible with 20k employees and making them exclusive
They are already struggling as is
Hopefully this is a late April Fools joke. Not that I would trust the source if it wasn’t anyways.
Totally agree. Capcom is off the table, Sega maybe.
I doubt it. Take 2’s CEO believes there is still room for growth. Capcom is not selling anytime soon.
Am I missing something? Why does it matter what Take 2’s CEO believes when it comes to Capcom selling or not?
A Japanese dev I would like Xbox to work with is suda51 and grasshopper. They made no more heroes, killer 7, lollipop chainsaw, and killer is dead.
They can make great action games, they should hire them to make a 2nd party game like contraband.
Yup. I would also love to see ports of NMH1 and 2, as well as Travis Strikes Again. Feels odd to only have NMH3 on Xbox.
That april fool Ubi image made me actually go and look at their market cap for the first time in a long time. I hadnt realized that they were damn near down to 3 billion USD now.
That changes my opinion on them. I think you might want to risk it and try for 2 more small pubs in Sega and Ubi now. I think they might genuinely want to sell if MS offered them 5 mil and the Guillemots might just want to wash their hands of it and get out.
That would make Xbox a juggernaut at that point which is the concerning point in regard to regulators.
The big problem with Ubisoft is the number of employees. We are at a time when companies are laying off many employees. Recently EA announced several hundred layoffs despite satisfactory results. Ubisoft is a real anomaly in the industry with these 22,000 employees. Does Microsoft want to absorb that many employees? Do they have solutions to remedy this problem (transfer of employees to other studios, layoffs)? Only Microsoft can answer that. Without this problem, Ubisoft would probably be the best acquisition to make at the moment. I think it might be worth acquiring them and looking for solutions if no one else (publishers) is on the table. Of course, there would be work and sacrifices to be made, but in the end you get something great for Xbox. So it’s up to Microsoft to make the decision based on the opportunities, I understand if they don’t go there, but personally I wouldn’t mind if they completed their acquisitions with Ubisoft and SEGA. They would have everything they need to succeed.
With the tencent investment into ubisoft last year a takeover is pretty unlikely. They invested at a €10bn valuation for the company. There’s almost certainly a clause in their deal with the Guillemot brothers that ubisoft can’t be sold for less then that and between them they have around 25% of the company and can raise that to 30% blocking any deal
tencent only got 10% in ubisoft and as far as i remember they invested in guillemot family rather than ubi the major investor in ubisfot is still guillemot family not tencent
Not exactly. Tencent had a share before hand and have now bought part of the Guillemot group. They’re now the largest shareholder with like 10-11% but they only have 5% of the voting shares. The combined Guillemot/tencent group own 25% of the voting shares and that can be raised to 30%
The deal with Tencent looks like a way to buy time for Ubisoft. Tencent’s power in Ubisoft is very limited. If I understood correctly, Tencent cannot sell its shares for 5 years, and cannot obtain more than 10% of Ubisoft’s shares for 8 years. In addition, the Guillemot family has the possibility of recovering its shares from Tencent. So I don’t think this deal is detrimental to an acquisition of Ubisoft.
Seems like ZOS have bought Hungarian studio Nemesys Games
Let’s go!!
Savvy Games (Saudi Arabia) are buying Scopely for $4.9B. Apparently mainly mobile. I don’t know anything about who the main mobile options are for an Xbox acquisition. Needs to get done but also not overly interested in those. 
The 5% is tencents voting rights. The other 20% the Guillemot brothers still retain and can be raised to a total between them of 30%. If you did a deal to buy a share of a company at a valuation of $10bn would you not have a clause that the company can’t be sold for less then that or have some way to make your money back on the deal?
if their price is that high nobody gonna buy em either way still doesnt the change the fact that tencent just owns 9.99% in ubisoft currently
Seeing hints like with Activisions lawsuit and now this. Microsoft buys troubled companies and WB is a very good candidate.
