Ubisoft

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Ubisoft Entertainment
Ubisoft logo
Type S.A.
Founded 1986
Headquarters Montreuil, Seine-Saint-Denis, France
Key people Yves Guillemot, CEO
Yannis Mallat, CEO of Montreal Studio
Michel Ancel, Game Designer,
Industry Interactive entertainment
Products Rainbow Six
Ghost Recon
Splinter Cell
Prince of Persia
Rayman
Myst
Brothers in Arms
Far Cry
Revenue €538 million sales FY2004-05
Operating income €41.4 million
Net income €27.2 million FY 2004-05 (before goodwill amortization)
Employees over 3500, 1760 in production tasks at the 1/20/2005
Website www.ubi.com
www.ubisoftgroup.com

Ubisoft Entertainment (formerly Ubi Soft) is a computer and video game publisher and developer with headquarters in Montreuil, France. The company has facilities in over 20 countries, including development studios in Montreal and Quebec City, Canada; Barcelona, Spain; Shanghai, China; North Carolina, USA; Düsseldorf, Germany; Sofia, Bulgaria; Bucharest, Romania and Milan, Italy, amongst other locations. As of 2004, it is the third-largest independent video game publisher in Europe, and the seventh largest in the US. The "Ubi" in Ubisoft is sometimes pronounced [juːbi] or more often [u'bi], in French it is pronounced [y'bi]. (See IPA phonetic notation.)

Contents

[edit] History

The five brothers of the Guillemot family founded Ubisoft as a computer game publisher in 1986 in France. Yves Guillemot soon made deals with Electronic Arts, Sierra On-Line, and Microprose to distribute their games in France. By the end of the decade, Ubisoft began expanding to other markets, including the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany.

In the early 1990s, Ubisoft initiated its in-house game development program which led to the 1994 opening of a studio in Montreuil, France, which later became their headquarters. That same year, Michel Ancel created the Rayman character, a character which still stars in new video games as of 2006. Ubisoft became a publicly traded company in 1996 and continued to expand to offices around the globe, opening locations in Shanghai and Montreal.

In 2000, Ubisoft acquired US-based Red Storm Entertainment, the game development studio founded by techno-spy novelist Tom Clancy, famous for games based on Clancy's books. In 2001, the company purchased Blue Byte Software, known for the Settlers series. By 2003, Ubisoft reported operations in 22 countries, nine of those containing production or design offices. Ubisoft had a number of successful and award-winning games that year, including Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, XIII, Rayman 3, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield and Beyond Good & Evil.

Ubisoft's revenue for 2002-2003 was €453 million; for fiscal year 2003-2004, this grew to €508 million. As of 2004, Ubisoft employs more than 2,350 people, of which over 1700 are classed as working in production. Yves Guillemot, a founding brother, is the chairman and CEO.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Ubisoft committed itself to online games by getting behind Uru: Ages Beyond Myst, The Matrix Online, and the European and Chinese operation of EverQuest. The publisher established ubi.com as its online division. But in February 2004, Ubisoft cancelled the online portion of Uru and backed out of the publishing deal on The Matrix Online. Regardless, only a week later the company announced its acquisition of Wolfpack Studios, developers of fantasy MMORPG Shadowbane, and in July 2004, its Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow was released for the Xbox and PlayStation 2 with what some considered a revolutionary online multiplayer feature.

On December 20, 2004 Electronic Arts (EA) purchased a 19.9% stake in the firm. At the time, Ubisoft released a statement saying they considered the purchase "hostile" until they had further information on EA's intent.

In March 2005 Ubisoft acquired MC2-Microïds (Microïds Canada) and integrated it into Ubisoft's Montreal studios.[1]

Ubisoft also bought the Driver franchise from Atari in July 2006, for a sum of €19 million (USD$24 million) in cash for the franchise, technology rights, and most assets. Additionally, though Ubisoft is not acquiring the studio outright, the 80 members of Driver developer Reflections Interactive will become employees of Ubisoft.

[edit] Starforce Controversy

Ubisoft is known to use Starforce copy protection that installs drivers on a system and is suspected to cause problems with some hardware and compatibility issues with certain operating systems, starting with the game Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory which as of the time of writing (February 2, 2006) is not compatible with Windows XP Professional x64 Edition. On April 14, 2006 Ubisoft confirmed that they will stop using Starforce on their games citing complaints from the customers.[3]

[edit] PRegScheduler MFC Application

Ubisoft is known to install an application called "PRegScheduler MFC Application" as a file named "PowerReg Scheduler.exe" outside of it's specified installation directories. PowerReg Scheduler.exe may show up as "PowerREGISTER" in your task list. It is a product registration application used by companies including Ubisoft, MicroProse, IOmega and PowerQuest (Partition Magic). This application is not installed to the user specified directories for a given Ubisoft product, rather it is placed directly in the Startup folder, which is a common tactic for rogue software such as spyware and malware. Examination of the programs properties shows the "Company Name" to be blank, even though the rest of the property information is available. This has caused many people to become alarmed that an unknown program by an unidentified company has been placed in their startup folder for unknown purpose.[2][3]

[edit] Upcoming games published by Ubisoft

[edit] 2007

[edit] Games developed/published by Ubisoft

Platform Key
PS3 PlayStation 3
Wii Wii
360 Xbox 360
PS2 PlayStation 2
Xbox Xbox
GCN Nintendo GameCube
PSP PlayStation Portable
DS Nintendo DS
GBA Game Boy Advance
GBC Game Boy Color
GB Game Boy
PS1 PlayStation
DC Dreamcast
Win Windows-based personal computer
Mac Apple Macintosh personal computer

This is a partial list of games developed and/or published by Ubisoft.

See also: Ubisoft Entertainment games

[edit] References

  1. ^ Ubisoft montréal enters into an agreement to aquire Microids Canada's development operations ubi.com
  2. ^ [1] Google for PRegScheduler
  3. ^ [2] Technical information on PRegScheduler

[edit] External links

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