“Ubisoft is initiating a new era in its journey”
Last night, Ubisoft unveiled a “new era in its journey” with the announcement that Tencent is committing $1.16 billion to a newly established subsidiary, leading to a reported increase of over 10% in the company’s shares.
To clarify the excessive terminology, this initiative is fundamentally based on Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, and Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six franchises, with Tencent acquiring a “minority ownership” of 25% in the new subsidiary. In addition to “strengthening the balance sheet” and enabling Ubisoft “to evolve into a more flexible entity”, it’s anticipated that the games will benefit as well:
This underscores the significant value of Ubisoft’s intellectual properties, substantially enhances its financial standing, and allows the company to persist in its efforts to become a more nimble organization, unleash the full creative potential of its teams, and better align its resources with the ever-changing demands of gamers.
This new subsidiary will concentrate on developing game ecosystems that are designed to be genuinely evergreen and cross-platform. Supported by increased investment and enhanced creative capabilities, this will promote further improvements in the quality of narrative-driven single-player experiences, provide larger multiplayer options with a greater frequency of content releases, introduce free-to-play elements, and integrate more social features.
As reported by Reuters, shares jumped by slightly over 10% on Friday morning following the announcement.
The Paris-listed stock rose 10.5% to 14.3 euros by 0833 GMT, resulting in an overall market capitalization of 1.9 billion euros.
This seemingly puts to rest the speculation that Xbox may acquire a major Ubisoft franchise in the near future, which might not have been a wise move to begin with – former Xbox creator Seamus Blackley suggested in a recent interview.
It will be intriguing to observe how things develop with these Ubisoft games in the upcoming years, and whether this new subsidiary results in enhanced experiences for players on Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and beyond.
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Fraser is the News Editor at Pure Xbox, where he dedicates his time to covering the most significant stories in the realm of Xbox and beyond.