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Vivendi ups stake in Ubisoft to 20.1 percent, edges toward takeover
- Thread starter Lime
- Start date
I just don't see a scenario where they don't end up owning Ubisoft. They have the money to do it and Ubisoft never had enough growth to make them unobtainable even with various anti-takeover efforts.
I feel that Ubisoft has also not made a successful argument for why Vivendi owning Ubisoft is going to be a problem. The talent exodus feels like a hollow threat given these people need jobs and we don't see actual development staff saying they're going to participate in one.
I feel that Ubisoft has also not made a successful argument for why Vivendi owning Ubisoft is going to be a problem. The talent exodus feels like a hollow threat given these people need jobs and we don't see actual development staff saying they're going to participate in one.
James Scott
Banned
It'll be interesting to see how the take over affects them as a company and their software output.
Vivendi owned Blizzard throughout most of their existence, and Activision through their rise to mega-success, and those are both nigh-entirely U.S. based companies. They'd be more than happy to have international studios.
Vivendi has always been about short term gains versus long term plans.
There's a reason why Activision bought itself out of them.
Vivendi is buying them in hopes of making money, cancelling the games that are going to make said money wouldn't make any sense.
They needed the cash to pay their huge debt stack. The idea was actually to pump up Activision Blizzard with debt at the same time as selling them off.
Business as usual initially, I don't expect anything so dramatic to happen. After a year or two however? Yeah, should be interesting to watch, even if it's a morbid sort of interest.
Corpsepyre
Banned
I'll be OK with this if it means we'll get another Prince of Persia.
Jean-Marie Messier kind of ruined them with his "vision" (which was a good one, just 10 years too early). It's very interesting to note that Vicent Bolloré is prety much following in Messier's footsteps
recklesscognition
Member
What is Vivendi's stance on collectibles in games?
GhostTrick
Banned
Ubisoft to become the next Canal Plus :")
Sorry guys, you can kiss Ubisoft goodbye if it happens.
hahaha :")
Triggerhappytel
Member
As I recall at the time, they needed the money from the ActiBlizz sale for another acquisition.
I'm not expecting much change even then honestly.
Ubisoft's main problem was they had really poor digital revenue. Now the vast majority of what they make are digital heavy online games, which is exactly what Vivendi would want them to do.
What I really don't understand with Gameloft's and Ubisoft's moves is that is goes against what Bolloré (and Vivendi in general) aim for when taking a stake in a company. They want to get to 20% but never own them outright. This was their strategy in the telecom space so seeing them acting very agressively against a fellow french company after the Canal+ debacle is prety surprising (as a note, after Vivendi purchased Canal +, the group lost more than 120k subscribers).
TheSinkingKnight
Member
They could not afford that. If they could, they'd buy their own shares to get to 51%
Simbabbad
Member
Ubi does not have that kind of money. If they did they could prevent the hostile takeover by buying back control of the company.
Media convergence. They also needed the money at some point.
They also have a whooping 96% of Gameloft since their hostile takeover. Guillemot sold them their Gameloft shares (like everyone else) to buy more Ubi ones.
Vivubi.
Spring Drive
Banned
Vivendi and Vincent Bolloré don't give a fuck
giant_frying_pan
Member
Ubisoft represents some of the more cynical aspects of gaming but all in all, their output throughout their history has been impressive.
I think I speak for most when I say: fuck off, Vivendi.
I think I speak for most when I say: fuck off, Vivendi.
Don't think that's an option for multiple reasons. Mainly they don't have the $.
The company that is having trouble fending of the bigger company will somehow buy majority of shares in the bigger company?
dragonflys545
Member
What can Vivendi possibly do that can destroy them? I mean their games already have micro-transactions, and DLC expansion packs as well as those deluxe edition, gold editions they love pooping out for every single games they release. Most of their older titles put a sour taste in my mouth.
$3.68B. Vivendi has close to $10B cash on hand.
TheSinkingKnight
Member
They could shut down studios and focus on just a few IP.
I was actually wondering about that, if Nintendo would buy a large enough stake to keep Guillemot in charge in exchange for guaranteed long-term support for their consoles. The issue is that, according to the Financial Times, the Guillemots own just 8.7% of the company, with 15% of the voting rights. With a current market cap of 3.7 billion, Nintendo would need to spend 1.3 billion / $1.5 billion (or more likely quite a bit more, as share prices will be pushed up in a bidding war like this) in order to buy enough shares for Nintendo+Guillemots to have a 51% controlling stake. They have the cash for an acquisition like that, but it's a hell of a lot of money to drop on a bit of western third party support.
Spring Drive
Banned
They were in debt and had a different management back then
EatinOlives
Member
Ubivendi
I think if it was EA it would be a no brainer. Much more difficult to asses Ubi's worth to Nintendo.
Triggerhappytel
Member
What beef do you have with the Guillemot family?
And no, I don't expect they will stick around if/when Vivendi completes the acquisition.
Seems to me Ubi have more big in-house franchises than EA do - from EA's conference a couple of weeks ago, most of their stuff at the moment is either sports games (which are all licensed out) and Star Wars games (which is obviously licensed too). Titanfall isn't theirs even though they probably own the publishing rights, and the only really big brand EA seem to be pushing at the moment which is a wholly-owned IP is Battlefield. On the other hand, Ubi have Assassin's Creed, Watch Dogs, The Division (all the Tom Clancy stuff) and Just Dance, and these are all in-house wholly owned IPs. If I were looking to buy one or the other and I had to consider the volume and value of their output, Ubisoft seems like a stronger prospect to me.
Dark Cloud
Member
Why doesn't Microsoft buy Ubisoft? They have plenty of money
Why and how would that work? Did you read the OP?
EA makes 3 of the top 5 selling console games year in and year out. If you want to appeal to masses there is no better way of doing it short of buying Activision/Blizzard.
Iva Demilcol
Member
This sounds so horrible I bet they'll choose it as their name.
Stone Ocean
Member
It's not that simple.
The reason any company would buy another is because it's worth more to them than that company is worth on it's own. In this example perhaps Ubisoft games being exclusive to Microsoft would make more profit for the newly combined company then they would be making separately (perhaps the increased sales of Xbox's would more than make up for lost sales of Ubi games due to exclusivity).
Of course in reality the finance people and all their spreadsheets don't think that's the case, or Microsoft would be doing that sort of stuff, probably. There's also the matter that potential investments are "competing" against all the other investments that a company could make, and there might be other things a company could do that would be even more profitable. Finally there's an element of how much risk a company is willing to take, risk being a huge consideration in finance (perhaps the main one really). Maybe a move like MS buying Ubi might be profitable, but the odds aren't really that great and MS would rather keep billions in government bonds and make a guaranteed 1% return until a better overall opportunity presents itself, or maybe just give it back to the shareholders if the shareholders feel they can do better with the money themselves than through MS.
cartographer
Member
They don't have the money to compete with Vivendi on that front. If they did this never would have been a problem for them.