EA buys 20% of UBISoft

[yamangman]

http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=57452

How long before we see IL-2 Sturmovik: The Sims Expansion?

[TiG]

To be honest i'd rather see EA ship IL2 than Ubisoft. I can't remember the last EA game i purchased that wasn't a finished product?

EA get too much critism for doing something successfully. They didn't get to where they did today without doing the whole concept of games in the first place.

BF1942, BF-Vietnam, Tiger Woods, Original Madden, 2 or 3 of the Fifa games over the years, Black and White, Sim City 3000 and 4, Medal of Honour, Need for Speed (not underground) In other words numerous games that i've had and paid good money for, my experience of Ubisoft has been less than satisfactory.

I'm not just talking Pacific fighters, but Raven Sheild 3 had a patch added which completely stopped all Virtual CD drives from working on my system.

UBisoft from my perspective pressures development through and releases half finished products, something that in my experience EA hasn't tended to do...

TiG

(Sorry if this seems like i'm attacking your posts Yamangman - i'm not trying to single you out i promise)

[yamangman]

No not at all this time I 100% agree with you, the fact of the matter is I have not bought an EA game in recent years because they release games which quite simply don't appeal to me or offend my sensibilities. UBI soft do indeed seem to rush titles out of the door in an unfinished state sometimes but they take a greater risk with a lot of the titles they do release regardless of any unfinished state.

I used to appreciate the older EA games also, from the days of Desert Strike etc, but Fifa XXXX, tiger woods XXXX, the sims XXXX, madden XXXX, the lord of the rings XXXX and command and conquer XXXX i do not own.

[Stoo]

Il7489 Stumovik - Teh Rev3ngz0r ?

[Steve]

I dont' like how EA gobble up other companies.

However, Ubisoft made POD, and they deserve to die for that reason alone.

[yamangman]

Someone appears not to have liked it, take a look at http://www.lo-mac.com , http://www.il2sturmovik.com , http://www.silenthunterii.com/ , http://www.raven-shield.com/

[bertie]

EA make pretty mediocre games imho - not exactly groundbreaking, I just remember not being able to play BF1942 on my Gf4 Ti4200 and EA did nothing about it for ages.
Oh and how badly coded was that game originally - memory leaks and all iirc

[Eddy396]

EA make pretty mediocre games imho - not exactly groundbreaking, I just remember not being able to play BF1942 on my Gf4 Ti4200 and EA did nothing about it for ages.
Oh and how badly coded was that game originally - memory leaks and all iirc

I agree. To say EA only release a finished product, is well... rubbish. Look at MOH pacific assault. It's junk. Multiplayer is virtually unplayable.

Remember MOH allied assault? They stopped supporting that game 6 months after release the MOHAA community kept that game alive after EA dumped everyone in the messy stuff, only to release 2 rubbish expansion packs and still without an anticheat. EA only care about sales and revenue.

[TiG]

It has a market capitalisation of $18bn, sales of $2.9bn and $2.5bn cash. Ubisoft has a market capitalisation of 300m euros ($402m).

Well there is a big difference in size anyway

Sales of $2.9bn a year!!!.

TiG

[Zedmeister]

Ubisoft have published some cracking games of late - specifically Morrowind

EA have been cashing in on many names recently - Lord of the Rings, Sims (Again!) et al. Mostly unispiring console fodder in my view.

[smtkr]

How much power does EA have over Ubisoft though? 20% is hardly a majority--it's just more than anyone else has. EA will have significant power, but nearly half of the remaining shareholders have to agree with EA on board decisions for EA to have its way, right?

[Vimeous]

I've been a BF1942 modder for almost 2 years now.
Support for the game itself was poor initially but as the community grew and stabilised support has been much improved. A valuable lesson has been learnt and now for BF:V and the forthcoming BF:2 there is a level of interaction with the community that previously didn't exist.
I do wonder however exactly how much pressure for the next game from publishers restricts developers from supporting already released product. Remember in the games industry a shelf-life longer than six months (Half-Life/CounterStrike) is the golden ticket, the exception to the rule, so they must press on.

Do I see EA as an all consuming monster?
Yes

Does their name help to sell games because the overall standard is above-average to high?
Yep the familiarity is really paying off and in general the games are pretty good.

Is Ubisoft more concientious than EA?
Nope. Any company that insists on changes to the way I operate my PC in order to play their games deserves to be shot.

Do I like the move?
I can't see it making much difference tbh. It's the games themselves that take precidence and on my desk right now I have 2 games each from EA, Sierra and Microsoft, and 1 game each from Codemasters, Atari, Take 2, Novalogic and Ubisoft.
To the informed gamer it's the game that matters whoever printed the label on the box.

[Bunjiweb]

This is good in one way - Ubisoft never advertise unless the game has a Tom Clancy licesne, which means so many great games flop, or do far worse than they should do (Beyond Good & Evil, Prince Of Persia). With EA's backing this I thought would change, and hopefully be good for Ubisoft.

However, as we all know, EA are the big bad brother of the industry who turn out piles of crap for every good game they release. Having said this they are getting better themselves as of late, although this is down to buying up game licenses me'thinks.... See Burnout 3 (best driving game of 2004 hands down).

As long as EA dont completly buy out Ubisoft i think this is a good move.

Ben