Insider Jeff Grubb has reported that Ubisoft is looking for potential partners for acquisitions or mergers. Grubb reveals that companies have “laughed at” during meetings with potential buyers. “Ubisoft definitely already did the rounds proposing acquisitions and mergers with other similar companies, and it mostly got laughed at,” Grubb tweeted. “It’s just too unwieldy. Its strength was its distributed development structure, and now that is an albatross.” He adds, “I hope it tries to ride it out because I think it might hold onto more people than if it tried to “slim down” for an M&A. Either way, though, it seems grim. Making games is a rough business.”
— Grubb (@JeffGrubb) January 11, 2023 The rumors of the acquisition come after news broke out that Ubisoft has delayed Skull and Bones for the nth time. The same reports indicate that the developer has canceled three unannounced projects that it has been working on for the past year. This is on top of the four canceled projects from last year. All of this info is from financial reports, which also revealed that Assassin’s Creed Mirage is just one of the few confirmed Ubisoft titles that’s coming out this year. Kotaku reporter Ethan Gach also shared that company CEO Yves Guillemot sent an email to staff telling them that “the ball is in your court” to deliver projects on time and within budget. He adds that Guillemot said that the upcoming pipeline of games is “the best in Ubisoft history” and thanked the staff for their ongoing contributions to Ubisoft.
— AmericanTruckSongs9 (@ethangach) January 11, 2023 Ubisoft does have an interesting pipeline of upcoming games. The company recently revealed a number of Assassin’s Creed titles along with a remake of Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell. Ubisoft is also working on the much-delayed The Division Heartland and an upcoming mobile game called The Division Resurgence. Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and an untitled Star Wars open-world game are also in the pipeline for Ubisoft. Frontiers of Pandora may come out this year or in 2024 while the Star Wars game is most likely still early in its development. Companies may be hesitant to acquire Ubisoft because of the sheer size of the company. The French developer has over 40 studios scattered around the world to go along with a massive cache of IPs. Interested parties may also think twice before making a big purchase following Microsoft’s struggles with trying to acquire Activision Blizzard. Hopefully, Ubisoft turns things around soon as gamers are excited about its slate of upcoming games. In particular, we’re watching out for the release of Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and the upcoming Assassin’s Creed Red and Hexe projects.
