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Ubisoft: Massive Buy Is a Step Towards MMOs

Kris Graft's picture

By Kris Graft

November 13, 2008

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Specific details Ubisoft's MMO plans are still under wraps, but the French publisher, which has yet to make an entry into the space, definitely has something cooking.

Speaking at BMO Capital Markets' Interactive Entertainment Conference in New York on Thursday, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot said the recent acquisition of real-time strategy house Massive Entertainment will play a role in the publisher's MMO plans.

"We just bought [Massive] from [Activision Blizzard] because those guys are Blizzard, so they didn't need that studio as much as we do. And they're extremely strong in RTS. [Massive is] also going get us closer to the MMO space."

This isn't the first time the Guillemot has mentioned Ubisoft's MMO ambitions. In March this year, the company announced its intentions to develop a Tom Clancy-branded MMO.

But Ubisoft won't be jumping headfirst into the genre.

"Our goal there is to go first with 'light' MMOs that have been extremely popular for a long time in China, but which are also coming up in the U.S. and Europe, and are generating good revenue. ... In the future, we'll come with RPGs and RTS also in the MMO space," Guillemot said.

Also on the strategy gaming front is Ubisoft's recent release of the voice-controlled RTS Tom Clancy's EndWar. The exec said the game is performing well enough commercially to possibly warrant more EndWar entries.

"We already have 100,000 people that are playing it online, and it continues to grow," said Guillemot. "The guys that are playing it are extremely happy with it, so we're thinking we will create a genre [around it]."

SwiftRanger's picture
On November 13th SwiftRanger said:

Massive hasn't made an MMO but their online infrastructure Massgate.net is the best online matchmaking service of recent years (regardless of genre or platform), that's gotta count for something.

There is a lot of potential with them although the question remains whether EndWar and World in Conflict/Ground Control don't cancel each other out. I easily see Ubisoft tasking Massive with creating yet another Tom Clancy-themed game, whether it's EndWar 2, EndWar: Sci-fi Conflict or EndWar: Cold War Blues.

savagehenry's picture
On November 13th savagehenry said:

I'm not to sure about these MMO's. Sure it's a nice cash cow for Blizzards or SquareEnix. But in term of actual games will developers ever get past the MMORPG craze?

I'm all for massively online gaming, just give us some decent games. the most popular games are a hardly aimed at the mature 30 somethings (this was the average gamer age published a few weeks ago). I don't mind paying a subscription to something, but it has to be more involved than WoW or Final Fantasy.