Matt Martin
07:39 (BST)
31/07/2008
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Ubisoft focuses on acquisitions and own IP to combat Activision Blizzard threat
Ubisoft has said that it plans to up its acquisition strategy and increase development of owned intellectual properties to combat the threat posed by the formation of Activision Blizzard.
Alain Corre, executive director at Ubisoft, has told GamesIndustry.biz that it plans to ramp up its two key priorities in order to catch up with the newly-merged super publisher over the next two years.
The publisher has already unveiled two new brands in the 55 million-selling Tom Clancy franchise – Tom Clancy's HAWX and Tom Clancy's EndWar – and at E3 this year announced new IP I Am Alive, in development at French studio Darkworks.
"We've been growing at a fast pace, more or less 20 per cent over the last ten years. So that's the plan going forward, but I think we need to increase the speed of growth, because we need to be as close as possible to those two," said Corre in an exclusive interview published today.
"The growth has been organic until now, and I think it's been one of the best assets for Ubisoft, to be able to create our own studios, our own IPs, and increase the number of sales per SKU, to create more hits and sell more units per great product.
"I think that's something we have to increase, so we have to create and produce more products with higher quality, to do more business with our franchises and build new franchises. That's really what we're aiming at - it's still the core business we have and want to develop.
And following the acquisition of Atari's Reflections studio and CGI movie specialist Hybride, Corre has said that the company is looking at every acquisition opportunity on the market.
"I think we'll make some more acquisitions, we're looking at every opportunity. Clearly what we're interested in doing is buying brands, buying talents and teams that can be complimentary to Ubisoft in fields that we're not covering yet.
"Basically it's to increase the speed of what we're already doing now - that's the strategy we have, in the next two years to bridge the gap between the top two and ourselves," he concluded.
The full interview with Ubisoft's Alain Corre can be read here.
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