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“Hey PlayStation, here’s how you compete. Buy Ubisoft”: God of War Creator David Jaffe Sends Another Out-of-Hand Message to PlayStation After He Could

Moses85

Member
Does this guy hear what he is saying? Anyone who else slightly familiar knows modern Ubisoft is shit, use the money on a different studio not ubishit.

Confused Always Sunny GIF by It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
They have brands with high potential!
 

Xtib81

Member
Ubi definitely have some crazy good IPs, they just don't know what to do with them + terrible management and decisions. So, I'd say stay away from them unless there's a pretty good deal.
 
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Clear

CliffyB's Cock Holster
Was the Ubisoftt Forward show this year any good?

Gotta be honest when I first saw the thread title I assumed it was a throwaway comment suggesting Sony should start acquiring publishers to keep up with MS, so I pretty much ignored it. But looking again, isn't its more about how competitive Ubi's showcase was?

EDIT: Skimmed the showcase. Technically very good, particularly Outlaws but damn... Ubi product is so bland and soulless all I can do is shrug.
 
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Ubi's market cap is $2.75 billion USD. Let's say Sony offers them 15 billion in cash + shares, and they accept, which the Guillemot family most probably won't, but still for argument's sake.

Let's see what their IP are worth.

Assassin's Creed - single player annual IP (not now, but they can go back to that model if they want to) and every entry sells more than 10 million copies in it's lifetime. This is good, even if Sony has a treasure trove of SP first party IP and studios that put way more quality content than any Ubi SP game.

Prince of Persia - Dormant IP that's currently seeing a resurgence, thanks to the stellar new Lost Crown metroidvania from Montpellier Studio and the SoT remake from the main Montreal studio. The OG DoT alone sold more than 15 million copies in it's lifetime. Future 3D remakes or even completely new franchises depends on sales of this remake.

Rainbow Six Siege - Their biggest live service game and the most successful one, yet. Sony would crave to want this under their belt, as they are yearning for PvP GaaS success as much as Helldivers 2 does currently.

The Division - second most "current" successful Ubi GaaS, another IP Sony would want.

Ghost Recon - insane potential for a PvE + PvP GaaS, if done right, and sadly in a bad state of affairs as an IP. Sony can turn this around with a proper dedicated team.

Splinter Cell - Has a dedicated core fanbase and moved more than 32 million copies and was shelved because the last entry, Blacklist, didn't move as much as they expected. The average is around 3 - 5 million, which low by Ubisoft's inflated standards. Sony would not mind this, as the series and character is iconic. Great PR.

Farcry - 50 million copies sold in the series so far (outdated sales numbers) in the 9 total, mainline and spinoffs, and wouldn't stop now if there were a new iteration. Sony would want this.

Watch Dogs - Both, the first, and second game, sold more than 10 million copies each. Though Legion didn't do that much, it still did numbers the Ubisoft wouldn't publish, but it broke even and didn't meet their lofty expectations. Another IP Sony doesn't mind having in their lineup.

Rayman (Rabbids IP included) - With more than 40 million copies sold in the franchise, this IP isn't going anywhere that isn't Ubisoft.

Just Dance - 80 million copies in the franchise so far, and Ubi's second biggest IP after Assassin's Creed. Self-explanatory.

Sony would love to have these franchises under their portfolio, the but the problem here is the 21000 + staff at all their studios and the management nightmare it's going to be, on top of the inevitable layoffs, post the acquisition, should it go through. Let alone the investment of billions of dollars into these IP's again, after investing in the acquisition, for development, that Sony would HAVE to endure and then slowly wait for ROI, for years.

They would rather sit back and enjoy the 30% royalty that they're currently getting from every copy of every Ubisoft game (retail physical or digital) and leave the hassle over to Ubi.

On the other hand, Microsoft would be a perfect contender for this type of acquisition, because they are a software giant first. But I'd rather not them buying another big western publisher.
 

johnnyKage5

Neo Member
jaffe seems publicly loose his mind right before a release he has been working on. he has been part of some good game franchises there is no lying there.
 

ShaiKhulud1989

Gold Member
Even if we take this inane idea at face value, Ubisoft is bulletproof from any sort of platform-holder merger thanks to the CoD deal.
 
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Three

Gold Member
Sony already makes a lot of games that are very Ubisoft-like. So no, I don't see how Ubisoft's portfolio is a good fit for what Sony already has.
I think Rainbow Six Siege would be a good get/fit businesswise but please no more consolidation. I'm not sure why people are encouraging that.
 
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Sonik

Member
Ah yes, after the genius purchase they made with Bungie, the closing of studios, the diminishing quantity of games now all they need is Ubisoft to complete the clusterfuck
 
David Jaffe is a clown who likes to say dumb things and this IS a dumb thing to say, but it's not the dumbest idea in the world.

Right now the market cap of Ubi Soft is worth 2.83 billion USD. To buy Ubi Soft would probably cost between 3.5 billion dollars and 4.2 billion dollars.

As many have said, there are a lot of similarities between Sony and Ubi Soft, to which I would say, Ubi Soft staffing could easily be incorporated into SIE to help develop a lot of SIE properties a lot faster and Sony could focus Ubi Soft on fewer but higher quality titles, gaining crucial IP for pennies on the dollar since Ubi Soft has been on such a decline in profitability recently.

Assassin's Creed/Ghost of Tsushima (assist Sucker Punch which has too small of a studio)
Just Dance/Sing Star (take over since Sony London has closed)
FarCry
Splinter Cell
Rainbow Six/SOCOM
Ghost Recon
Prince of Persia
Watch Dogs

I think you'd have to cut a lot of staff overall and as I said, it's dumb because there are better use cases for the investment than taking over a major publisher with dwindling value and a massive payroll, but if you could get them for less than 3 billion dollars it would be a massive influx of content. They're not the worst buy or the best buy.

Long story short, stop giving David Jaffe the spotlight to say crazy things. All he wants is attention. He's salty that he doesn't get attention for his contributions to Sony, which is largely why he saddles up to Xbox. He's probably trying to pivot from that now.
 
Ah yes, after the genius purchase they made with Bungie, the closing of studios, the diminishing quantity of games now all they need is Ubisoft to complete the clusterfuck

The Bungie purchase is looking better and better...

What studios did they close? London Studio and Pixelopus (6 people)? What else? And what games did either of these studios make recently?
 

Sonik

Member
The Bungie purchase is looking better and better...

What studios did they close? London Studio and Pixelopus (6 people)? What else? And what games did either of these studios make recently?

How is the Bungie purchase looking better and better? It was 3.6 goddamn billion, what have they done to justify that ridiculous sum of money?
 

ArtHands

Thinks buying more servers can fix a bad patch
Sure why not? Have a crossover between Ghost of Tsushima and Assassin's Creed Shadow.

Assassin's Creed Tsushima
 

KXVXII9X

Member
The obsession with competing and being so focused on what your competition is doing and isn't doing is how you lose and become devoid of a vision.

I think buying Ubisoft and making the games exclusive would piss people off and the games will generate less sales being on one platform.
 

pasterpl

Member
it's not fact. Sony releases plenty of games. There are plenty of games to play on PlayStation. People are freaking out over a Microsoft showcase where most of the big games aren't even coming out in 2024. I am honestly baffled by these things I am reading lately.
Look how funny this is, for years I heard on neogaf there are no games on Xbox but I barely find time to play most of the releases and my backlog is growing every month by couple of titles.
 
The thing that worries me is how dependent Ubisoft is on Houdini.
They use it for all their open world building tech.
So if Houdini would get acquired by a rival they'd be screwed.

Kinda like Apple and TSMC.

Anything can happen. Just these last couple years Epic has acquired Quixel and 3lateral. Unity has Weta and Speedtree.
 

AmuroChan

Member
I think Rainbow Six Siege would be a good get/fit businesswise but please no more consolidation. I'm not sure why people are encouraging that.

Totally agree. Rainbow Six would be a good IP to get, but the problem with acquiring a big publisher like Ubisoft is that you're acquiring ALL the assets, not just the ones you want. That inevitably means some studios are going to get closed down and a bunch of people will get laid off.
 

Dorfdad

Gold Member
Wait doesn’t Ubisoft own the rights to publishing some Microsoft games for the next 10 years through the European court case? Wouldn’t that be something of a pickle??
 

StereoVsn

Gold Member
I ain’t the biggest Sony fan, especially this gen, but even I wouldn’t recommend they buy that shitty company. CDPR? Sure. FROM? Absolutely. Ubisoft? Lol. Fuck no. Ubi are trash.
How about just generally not buying any big studios. Instead what if (shocker I know) corpos organically grew studios and maybe did small targeted acquisitions.

I would hate for Sony to buy CDPR or FROM because that means I won’t get to play those games till like 2 years out on PC and I want my mods.

Edit: Ubi is still trash, nobody sane should be buying that dumpster fire. 🔥
 
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Sell bungie and buy ubisoft be good for sony as it has pretty neat fps games from farcry to ghost recon. I loved playing ghost recon advance warfare 2 and roguespear. Alot of ips under the belt to. I know ubisoft done alot of crazy things consumers don't like but probably be different if it was under sony
 

willothedog

Member
Wait doesn’t Ubisoft own the rights to publishing some Microsoft games for the next 10 years through the European court case? Wouldn’t that be something of a pickle??

There is bound to be some clause that if the company was acquired by another party this would be void. Wasn't it just cloud games?
 

StereoVsn

Gold Member
it's not fact. Sony releases plenty of games. There are plenty of games to play on PlayStation. People are freaking out over a Microsoft showcase where most of the big games aren't even coming out in 2024. I am honestly baffled by these things I am reading lately.
Hell, some of the games will probably slip into 2026. Quality if others is still under a big ???, and bunch of those games will come to PS5 anyways.

But instead let’s panic and buy a terribly run huge corporation. Regulators will love that shit.
 

Dorfdad

Gold Member
There is bound to be some clause that if the company was acquired by another party this would be void. Wasn't it just cloud games?
I found it yeah it’s 15 years. But Sony has a cloud service maybe they just publish it to their services alone lol.

In August 2023, Ubisoft announced a deal with Microsoft that gives Ubisoft the exclusive worldwide rights to stream Activision Blizzard games in the cloud for 15 years, except for non-exclusive rights in the European Economic Area. The deal includes all current and future Activision Blizzard games, DLC, and perpetual licenses. Ubisoft will be able to make the games available on Ubisoft+, its game subscription service, as well as on other cloud gaming services, such as Nvidia, Boosteroid, Nware, Ubitus, and EE. Ubisoft will also be able to license the games to other companies, including console makers and service providers.
 

Perrott

Member
Are you serious? How does this woman keep getting work? What has she done to deserve all the fucking jobs she's had in this industry?
She's one of the best studio heads in the biz and the fact that there are super high-profile senior talent that have followed her from Ubisoft Montreal/Toronto to EA Motive to Stadia to now Haven speaks of the respect developers have for her.

Also, looking at Glassdoor reviews, Haven seems to be the best led, most innovative and with the highest morale studio in the entire PS Studios organization. Just for comparison's sake, Firesprite is a dumpster fire according to Glassdoor reviews, later verified by reports from Bloomberg and Eurogamer UK.

So the reason why she had all these jobs is because she's incredibly good at them.
 

Black_Stride

do not tempt fate do not contrain Wonder Woman's thighs do not do not
Are you serious? How does this woman keep getting work? What has she done to deserve all the fucking jobs she's had in this industry?

She started the studio herself just quickly.
Then Sony went ahead and bought this shit, so I have no idea how she managed to convince them, but thats some trippy shit.

And back when she started it, I said this game would never come out or would be utter shite.......little did I know that she was gonna actually produce utter shite.

I actually hope the game is good because if it fails it means she has some sorta jujutsu that makes people give her money just for her to throw it away and move on to the next project.
 

Black_Stride

do not tempt fate do not contrain Wonder Woman's thighs do not do not
She's one of the best studio heads in the biz and the fact that there are super high-profile senior talent that have followed her from Ubisoft Montreal/Toronto to EA Motive to Stadia to now Haven speaks of the respect developers have for her.

Also, looking at Glassdoor reviews, Haven seems to be the best led, most innovative and with the highest morale studio in the entire PS Studios organization. Just for comparison's sake, Firesprite is a dumpster fire according to Glassdoor reviews, later verified by reports from Bloomberg and Eurogamer UK.

So the reason why she had all these jobs is because she's incredibly good at them.

The respect she earned gets her a pass 9 times out of 10..........for me this is that 1 missing.
FairGame$ seems like a game thats 5 years too late for the trend that it is following......granted if they are only at the CGI stage now, they are still atleast 18 months out from shipping........maybe heist games are back in fashion then?
 
How is the Bungie purchase looking better and better? It was 3.6 goddamn billion, what have they done to justify that ridiculous sum of money?

They just released what may be a GOTY candidate and the highest scoring game of the year?

It's selling extremely well on PS5, Xbox, and Steam.

That bodes pretty well for Marathon, their first major release since Destiny 2.

I'm wondering if this was a serious question.
 

Perrott

Member
The respect she earned gets her a pass 9 times out of 10..........for me this is that 1 missing.
FairGame$ seems like a game thats 5 years too late for the trend that it is following......granted if they are only at the CGI stage now, they are still atleast 18 months out from shipping........maybe heist games are back in fashion then?
Is it though? Yes, thematically it is reminiscent of Watch_Dogs which is a decade old IP, but when it comes to its genre, we're talking about the very first AAA extraction shooter... ever? Even Escape from Tarkov, the genre's genesis and most popular title, is still stuck in a perpetual early access state, so Fairgame$ might as well be the first proper release of any game of its kind, since it is expected to hit before Bungie's Marathon.
 

Dick Jones

Gold Member
Jaffe, either stop or start taking drugs. The opposite of what you're doing when you made that statement.
 
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cormack12

Gold Member
Market leader, in throes of best profits ever needs to compete.

Sonys problem isn't IP or library. At the moment it's just a drought of what excites players. Some of that is poor decision making, some of it is down to taking a punt on ideas that didn't work out but it's not gonna be long before we see their hand.
 
Sony would need to receive money for sticking their flag into this giant steaming pile of dogshit. I mean sure they have a couple IP that make tons of money, even though that's hard to believe. Bringing those under the Sony umbrella would be a nightmare for the company, I don't it'll work. This shit can't be sonyfied.
 

sloppyjoe_gamer

Gold Member
Im too white to listen to his nonsense.

Besides, we should pray for him that he someday figures out how to shoot diagonally in Metroid Dread. Is he still stuck in that first room? 😆🤡
 
Aren't they already winning?
In all fairness PS is being run into the ground currently, games are in limbo and even though the PS fanboys would follow the brand into a burning fire, it's quite apparent that things are not going well over there. Ubisoft if nothing else get the games done, so I suppose that's what he's talking about not hardware sales.
 
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