Weakened Eidos in Play? ...EA, Ubisoft Said to be Circling
Weakened Eidos in Play? ...EA, Ubisoft Said to be Circling
December 1, 2008
SCi, the parent company of Tomb Raider publisher Eidos, is apparently a takeover target.
UK newspaper the Daily Mail reports that Electronic Arts and Ubisoft are both considering an acquisition of the troubled firm.
Given that SCi is on hard times, EA and Ubi are no doubt enticed by the prospect of picking up Eidos's popular Tomb Raider and Hitman franchises on the cheap. From the Daily Mail story:
[The merger talk] follows a nightmare year for the firm in which its losses have quadrupled and the share price has slumped 92 per cent... From a peak of £1billion at the height of the dotcom boom it is worth just £50million today... As recently as a year ago the games developer was worth more than £600million.
But a series of self-inflicted wounds coupled with the precipitous slide in the stock market have conspired to drag the shares down from a 12 month peak of 243p to just 18½p yesterday...
The source said the suitors have been waiting to see if SCi would deliver the latest Lara Croft game, which has been delayed, but finally came out this week in time for Christmas.
Via: Edge Online
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Comments
You've gotta wonder. If the comapny is doing SOOO badly, then why do other companies think they can do better with the same set of cards?
If it were as easy as cutting the bad to allow the good IP's to prosper, Eidos would have done it themselves.
Maybe someone thinks that the lack of profit is caused entierly by bad management of the IP in question... i dont know.
I actually think that is right on the money. Poor management can be compounded by familiarity to the product. The current management may not be able to properly manage the current IP. It would take a large influx of new eyes to manage it correctly.
It is a common event in programming. You could look at a few pages of code for days trying to figure out why it is not compiling. Then one day a fellow coder walks by and points out an improper comparison operator and the code compiles.
The same can be true of management.
E. Zachary Knight
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It seems like all the video game companies are taking it hard, Eidos is doing nothing wrong.
--- Official Protector of Videoland!
Except for the subtle fact of messing around with the press? Ex: Gretsmann-gate
What do you guys mean by IP?
--- Official Protector of Videoland!
Intellectual property, a broad term that covered any owned ideas or copyrights such as stories or such, most games are considered IP in that sense. Its a term of owenership applied to things that arent physical by nature.
I think the media manipulation (e.g. GerstmannGate, the Tomb Raider Legend Metacritic stuff) and the consumer backlash might have something to do with their decline.
I think Edios IPs that are only worth taking are Tomb Raider and Hitman, and both which I don't see fitting with either companies since those dont exactly fit with Ubisofts Tom Clancy games, and EA already has Mercinaries and Mirror's Edge. So I don't see any value in taking them over for either companies.
Are there any other IP's that Edios has that are any good?
Ubisoft releases a lot more games than the Tom Clancy stuff.
E. Zachary Knight
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Like Petz and Dogz, and Imagine Babyz! Dude don't kid yourself, the hardcore portion of Ubisoft is basically Tom Clancy. Well there is Far Cry and Assasins Creed though.
AC+Tomb Raider? Makes sense...
I'm pretty sure Ubisoft developed a lot of good games besides Tom Clancy. Beyond Good & Evil, The Sands of Time trilogy, Rayman... I could go on. Give the folks some credit.
Deus Ex and Theif are still their IP I believe.
Well with Ubisoft I don't think they want two stealth games competing against each other. (Splinter Cell vs. Theif) and Deus Ex is something for both publisher that fills a gap they don't have.
But they wouldn't compete. They have different themes that appeal to different gamers. I could see them doing well together. Now if you released them at the same time, then there could be problems.
E. Zachary Knight
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But you have got to imagine, especially from a publisher angle that it would be more cheaper and make much more sense to take the Splinter Cell code and just paint it over with Theif. Both the stealth light and dark work in both games, and both have a working aiming and shooting system. So what you would essentially be getting is a mod on Splinter Cell. I'm just saying that there's a certain danger when you have two games that are very similar to each other, and that is warrented in games with different themes and enviroments like Oblivion and Fallout 3, which uses the same engine and plays very similar to each other.
Yeah but EA don't want amazing games, just ones they can spin out for fifty sequels worht of profit.
Are you still living in pre-2004?
Assassins Creed! Great game.
Ubisoft should do it, lord knows EA needs a BIGGER monopoly.
---You are likely to be eaten by a Grue.
Fantastic reasoning you have there!
Well, IF EA gets their greasy mits on it, be ready see several dozen crappy sequels to everything in the Eidos portfolio, with perhaps a few gems being released that were already in development. After that the studio will probably be taken quietly out back and shot.
Not that Ubisoft wouldn't do the same thing, but the end result may be better overal.
Well EA has it's hands off developer policy now, so I doubt that will happen right now how things are going.
What the CEO screams at the top of his lungs to the outside world and what EAs excessively massive management actually does are 2 very different things.
Their CEO wants to turn things around, and I applaud his initiative, but until he fires about two-thirds of the management at EA, I doubt any change will happen.
I dunno if you know this, but the economy is spiraling the drain right now. And it's not just EA doing layoffs, if you get your news sources outside of Game Politics, THQ also did massive lay offs, and even before that Blizzardvision also kicked out a lot of teams and a lot of games as well.
Well if Ubisoft buys them then EA will have a stake in them since they have roughly a 23% stake in Ubi.
Yeah, doesn't surprise me. EA and ubisoft both put out crap games, but their marketing is top notch. Somehow every release they manage to blind gamers with the hype until two months out when gamers realize they got maybe 15 hours out of a 60 dollar purchase.
Yay more crap.