According to our friends at pspupdates, Europe is now Ubisoft’s biggest market.
First, our money - the pound or the euro - is very strong and because of that the turnover from those countries is heavier than they used to be. So for Ubisoft turnover Europe is actually more important than the US now, and by more than 5 per cent. It’s become a very strong market for us. - Yves Guillemot, Ubisoft’s CEO.
We can expect some positive changes coming our way if this situation continues. Let us know what you think in the thread.
Does that mean we’ll get Rainbow Six: SOHO or the likes of Tom Clancy Splinter Cell: Operations Ladbrokes
Comment by JohnSketch — Aug 29, 2008 @ 3:20 pm
With “Far Cry 2″, “Prince of Persia”, “Brothers In Arms: Hell’s Highway”, “Shaun White Snowboarding”, “I Am Alive”, and the two, possibly three, Tom Clancy franchise titles (”Splinter Cell: Conviction”, “EndWar”, and “H.A.W.X”), and the potential for another “Driver” title within the next twelve months, Ubisoft have got a great line-up to look forward to.
BFN,
fp.
Comment by fanpages — Aug 29, 2008 @ 3:25 pm
I just hope all those titles Fanpages has mentioned don’t turn out to be more along the lines of Haze & Assassins Creed, two anticipated but hugely flawed games.
Shaun White Snowboarding is looking excellent though, and I have it on Pre-Order already.
Comment by Robothamster — Aug 29, 2008 @ 3:33 pm
H.A.W.X has “nothing” on ACE COMBAT - just doesnt have that epic “anime” inspired plot vibe of scale and intense emotion…
As for EndWar i’m always up for doing something “new” and “different” but i’m not convinced it will work solidly enough with purely voice commands - i like my RTS games dont get me wrong…but there is something about having a mouse and keyboard that feels ingrained with the genre…without it i feel a bit awkward - hopefully HALO WARS will change that though
As for SC:Conviction….well…Double Agent wasa bit “meh” - but here’s hoping “fingers crossed”
Comment by JohnSketch — Aug 29, 2008 @ 3:43 pm
@3 [Robothamster]:
With regards over-hyping, please see the comment I made (#6) in the “Top Trumps” blog entry for the lead character in “Assassin’s Creed”…
[ threespeech.com/blog/2008/06/three-speech-top-trumps-altair/ ]
BFN,
fp.
Comment by fanpages — Aug 29, 2008 @ 4:00 pm
…and my comment (#40) in the “It’s the Resistance 2 cover art!” a few days ago (ignoring my garbled attempt at English in the same entry)…
[ shacknews.com/onearticle.x/54427 ]
—
Ubisoft: Stronger Currency Makes Europe ‘More Important’ Than US, EndWar Will Change Industry
by Chris Faylor Aug 27, 2008 11:51am CST
Stronger European currency has caused French publisher Ubisoft to view Europe’s market as more important than that of the US, CEO Yves Guillemot has revealed.
“Turnover in Europe is actually more important than the US now, and by more than 5%,” Guillemot told GamesIndustry.biz, owing the shift to the strength of the pound and euro. “It’s become a very strong market for us.”
Echoing Nintendo’s mission statement with its Wii and DS hardware, the Ubisoft executive expressed his belief that games like like Guitar Hero, Rock Band and Ubisoft Shanghai’s upcoming voice-controlled RTS effort EndWar (PS3, 360) are increasing the popularity and appeal of games by making them more accessible.
“A game like EndWar, for example, which you can control by voice–it’s totally changing the industry because it gives you the opportunity to command what’s happening, and to have a quick answer to the orders you give,” he explained. “I think this market has no limit in the growth it can have if we can make sure that the people that are coming in are staying.”
—
Talking of popularity in Europe, (and garbled English), looking at Quarkbase(dot)com, the ThreeSpeech site is visited almost as many times (16.8%) by visitors originating in the US, as it is to visits from the UK (18.1%).
Germany: 8.1%; the Netherlands (7.3%); Ireland (5.9%), and so on.
!?!
BFN,
fp.
Comment by fanpages — Aug 29, 2008 @ 4:09 pm
don’t care about promisses
i want the same price scheme they use in the US and not saying the EU is the most importante region in the world (like phil Harrison once said)
and put the games first in Euros and then in $
Shit or Poop, it both stinks
decent pricing (not the 1$ is 1 Euro,which SCEE still uses)
1 Worldwide store
PSN-Cards
the possibility to purchase movies from other regions,since you’r intrestted in them,not being blocked by IP’s
Ubisoft use your force and tell SCEE what to do!!
Comment by terrortime — Aug 29, 2008 @ 4:11 pm
@4 [JohnSketch]:
…it shouldn’t even be called “Tom Clancy’s EndWar”:
[ http://us.penguingroup.com/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780425222140,00.html# ]
“…Written by David Michaels”
And the rear cover is quite amusing…
[ discountedgame.blogspot.com/2008/05/tom-clancys-endwar-features-history.html ]
—
Endwar was published as a novel, on the 5th of February 2008 in paperback form. The back cover says “Based on Ubisoft’s bestselling game, Tom Clancy’s EndWar”, despite the game not yet having been released.
—
BFN,
fp.
Comment by fanpages — Aug 29, 2008 @ 4:16 pm
Ubiwat? -_-
Comment by HenryMax — Aug 29, 2008 @ 4:37 pm
“Europe is our most important market because we can charge more for our product and the stupid bleeders still keep paying for it.”
Comment by Tuatara — Aug 29, 2008 @ 6:33 pm
If Europe is now more important than America this should mean that they’ll take the PS3 more seriously, as the PS3 is arguably much more popular in Europe than the 360 is. Hopefully this should put an end to half-arsed ports of the 360 version…
P.S. LOL @ JohnSketch (#1)
Comment by Apnomis — Aug 29, 2008 @ 7:59 pm
Put some games on Steam in Europe, Ubisoft!
Do it now!
Comment by Mace — Aug 29, 2008 @ 8:13 pm
Cheers nomis
Now - I Have a Plan!
I’m going to harass as many game developers as possible in the vain hope of plugging my name into their games!
First I ask ThreeSpeech - can you pop my name up for a day onto your site banner I give you hugs?
Comment by JohnSketch — Aug 29, 2008 @ 8:26 pm
@11 [Apnomis}:
Let's hope Yves Guillemot was referring to a PlayStation platform as Ubisoft develop titles for many others.
In February this year (just six months ago) he seemed to hedge his changes on Microsoft & Nintendo...
[ http://www.mcvuk.com/interviews/197/INTERVIEW-Ubisoft ]
BFN,
fp.
Comment by fanpages — Aug 29, 2008 @ 9:38 pm
Pardon me for asking this, but aren’t Ubisoft French?
I would bl**dy well hope so, that their biggest territory would be Europe! I mean, if they can’t crack it here, then what possible hope would they have elsewhere?
Anyway, why is this such Earth-shattering news? hat’s all the excitement about?!
It feels vaguely like nothing to me…
Comment by Zed Zee — Aug 29, 2008 @ 11:54 pm
Of course, one could look at this the other way and take it to mean: “We couldn’t crack America or AP, so we’re retreating into EMEA - the territory we know best.”
Previous typo: “What’s all the excitement about?!”
Comment by Zed Zee — Aug 30, 2008 @ 12:22 am
[...] Good news for Ubisoft fans in Europe… - at Threespeech (No Ratings Yet) Loading … RSS feed for comments on this post. Write a [...]
Pingback by Good news for Ubisoft fans in Europe… | GameBlews PS3, XBOX 360, Wii, PSP, DS News — Aug 30, 2008 @ 1:00 am
http://www.gamekyo.com/video12901_afrika-new-gameplay-video-part-1.html
Gimme 1 good reason why only Japan gets this game?
Afrika should be a worldwide experience on a Regionfree Console…
thank god for imports!!!!!!
Comment by terrortime — Aug 30, 2008 @ 12:58 pm
http://www.gamekyo.com/video12901_afrika-new-gameplay-video-part-1.html
Gimme 1 good reason why only japan gets this game
the world should experience the beauty of Africa from their livingroom on a region free console
Thank God/buddah for Imports
Comment by terrortime — Aug 30, 2008 @ 1:01 pm
and for those who are intrested:
2 more clips
http://www.gamekyo.com/video12902_afrika-new-gameplay-video-part-2.html
http://www.gamekyo.com/video12903_afrika-new-gameplay-video-part-3.html
Comment by terrortime — Aug 30, 2008 @ 4:09 pm
@17
I agree, I think its completely idiotic that Afrika isn’t being released in Europe/the US. It looks great and I’m on the verge of importing if its easy enough to get through with no Japanese knowledge, but I’m hoping someone sees sense and just changes the language for a worldwide release
Comment by Talvon — Aug 30, 2008 @ 4:24 pm
….great news, now if only SCEE and SONY as a whole shared the opinion Europe might not feel like it constantly gets the shaft!
Oh and Motorstorm 2 was nowhere to be seen at the Trafford Centre today! Cheers!
Comment by SlapnutzUK — Aug 30, 2008 @ 7:09 pm
I don’t believe in Ubisoft one bit. Sure they have some great games, but they almost always publish terrible ports on PS3 which are way overpriced as well.
First they should make the PS3 versions of their games as good or even better as their XBox 360 versions and second they should adjust the price to the US one.
Comment by MrXToTheN — Aug 31, 2008 @ 2:57 am
@ terrortime - yes, eveyone should have the opportunity to go around worrying wildlife
seems odd that we don’t get it even though the in-game menus are all in english. looks really nice too, i seriously hope they rethink the whole Japan Only deal with that title.
maybe they think us Westerners only want FPS games! it’s titles that strayed away from the norm on the PS2 like this that made that console great, at the moment the PS3 is just churning out the same old same old titles, fps and drivers and beat-em-ups.
oh well, there’s always importing a copy i guess.
ALSO, now that Ubisoft has stopped writing the cheques for the Frag Dolls UK i feel there is an opening in the market for some of us TS regulars to jump in. ‘The Fragged Up Guys’ - i’m thinking Sketchy, E-role, Terrortime, myself and we can have fanpages as teh office gimp
so who’s going to send the proposal to SCEE then?
Comment by mobiletone — Aug 31, 2008 @ 10:07 am
@ Mobiletone,
agree with you,if FPS was my thing i would have bought a M$-box,since they release 13 a dozen.
no, i wanted games on a platform which showed the differcity of a console,
yes it’s not always sony to blaim (e.g. where is SSX on the next-gen)
but the moment Sony has a possibility to put themselves ahead of the competition :
[repetative mode]
Afrika,
1 world wide store
1 pricing schema
1 world wide release day any content
PSN-cards
1 moviestore worldwide (don’t care about the bandaid called vid-whatever till 2010)
[/repetative mode]
SCE completely FAILs at all possible angles
considering myself a FUGger then
Comment by terrortime — Aug 31, 2008 @ 5:52 pm
Gimp?
Hey… I resemble that remark!
Comment by fanpages — Aug 31, 2008 @ 8:03 pm
This would be good news if vegas 1 and 2 (v2 had exact same problems as original port) didnt have so many problems, assassins creed wasnt so reptitive and haze was actually any good. I suppose the fact that dollar is so crap at the moment would be good for the xbox side for ubisoft, but for me i wouldnt care if ubisoft went xbox exclusive, would save me money anyway! Just my opinion.
Comment by Dante — Aug 31, 2008 @ 8:10 pm
Sorry to join the bashing, but if the European market is really important, stop charging 20-40% more from the customers there than in the US. While this sucks for all people are living in countries with the Euro as their currency, it sucks even more for countries like Switzerland, which have to bear with another 10% more on each and every game… this is also why people are trading their games 2nd hand which troubles EA so much, as it seems…
Comment by Masahiro — Sep 1, 2008 @ 10:13 am
@pages @ tone
I think being the Gimp would be an honour! just a pity i dont look good in leather
I’de be up for that - dibs on being the meat shield!
Comment by JohnSketch — Sep 1, 2008 @ 1:58 pm
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
Leave a comment