It may be one of the biggest video game companies out there, but it seems Ubisoft is now open to a buyout.
So said CEO Ives Guillemot during the company’s most recent earnings call, while also highlighting the fact the company is big enough to stand on its own.
“Ubisoft’s assets have never been so strong at a time when the value of assets has never been so high”, said Guillemot, as was recently reported on VG247.
Ubisoft’s boss also added that “if there were an offer to buy us, the board of directors would of course review it in the interest of all stakeholders”.
Which is obviously something that leaves the door open to Ubisoft being bought by a third party sometime in the future.
This sounds very different to what Guillemot said back in 2015, when media conglomerate Vivendi was steadily buying Ubisoft shares with the goal of swallowing the company in a hostile takeover…
This is something Ubisoft averted in the end (with a little help from Chinese giant Tencent), with Guillemot always emphasizing the company’s desire to remain independent.
It appears things have changed though, and seeing rivals like Bethesda Softworks being gobbled up by the likes of Microsoft, or the more recent acquisition of Destiny 2 studio Bungie by Sony, might have made Ubisoft wish it were part of a larger whole.
Even more impressive was Microsoft’s buyout of Activision Blizzard (a deal with is yet to be finalized though) for a whopping $70 billion US dollars.
The size of this acquisition makes Ubisoft seems small by comparison, as the French company is valued at about $6 billion US dollars…
But then again Ubisoft CEO also reminded people during its recent earnings call that the company has the “scale” to remain an independent entity.
“Ubisoft can remain independent. We have the talent, the industrial and the financial scale, and a large portfolio of powerful IP”, said Guillemot.
And the truth is that the company has some of the most valuable IPs around, including the Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry video game franchises, and some highly promising upcoming games like the pirate-themed Skull & Bones.
Nonetheless, there’s no reason why Ubisoft would not continue to do well if it was bought by the likes of Microsoft or Sony, or even Chinese giant Tencent (which already owns a stake in Ubisoft). And it might even be Ubisoft who does the buying, as there were rumors years ago it might make a move for Hitman studio IO Interactive, but this never materialized.
So it’s a matter of wait and see, then, whether Ubisoft will continue to sail alone in the video game world or not, but as long as it keeps making great games, its fans will be happy either way.