The world of Assassins Creed: How Ubisoft created one of the most popular franchises of all time?
Creating a fantasy world that almost feels like reality is the specialty of the company we will discuss in this blog. Ubisoft is the creator of game franchises like Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, Prince of Persia, etc. We'll be discussing in detail how Ubisoft established itself in the gaming market and how it evolved over time to become one of the biggest names in the industry.
Overview
Ubisoft Entertainment SA formerly called Ubi Soft Entertainment SA is a French video game company headquartered in Saint-Mandé with development studios across the world. Ubisoft is a producer, publisher, and distributor of interactive entertainment products. Its video game franchises include Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, For Honor, Just Dance, Prince of Persia, Rabbids, Rayman, Tom Clancy's, and Watch Dogs. The company was founded by Christian Guillemot, Claude Guillemot, Gérard Guillemot, Michel Guillemot and Yves Guillemot.
Ubisoft has a number of subsidiaries in different parts of the world. Ubisoft has also created a few technologies such as Ubisoft Connect, formerly called Uplay is a digital distribution, digital rights management, multiplayer, and communications service for PC. According to Guillemot, Ubisoft recognized that connected sandbox games, with seamless switches between single and multiplayer modes, provided the players with more fun, leading the company to switch from pursuing single-player-only games to internet-connected ones. Let us take a look at Ubisoft’s history and the games developed by them.
History
By the 1980s, the Guillemot family had established themselves as a support business for farmers in the Brittany province of France and other regions, including the United Kingdom. The five sons of the family – Christian, Claude, Gérard, Michel, and Yves– helped with the company's sales, distribution, accounting, and management with their parents before university. In 1985, the brothers established Guillemot Corporation for similar distribution of computer hardware. As demand continued, the brothers recognized that video game software was becoming a lucrative property and decided that they needed to get into the industry's development side, already having insight on the publication and distribution side. Ubi Soft (formally named Ubi Soft Entertainment S.A.) was founded by the brothers on 28 March 1986. The name "Ubi Soft" was selected to represent "ubiquitous" software.
Ubi Soft initially operated out of offices in Paris, moving to Créteil by June 1986. In 1996, Ubi Soft listed its initial public offering and raised over US$80 million in funds to help to expand the company. Within 2 years, the company established worldwide studios in Annecy (1996), Shanghai (1996), Montreal (1997), and Milan (1998). On 9 September 2003, Ubi Soft announced that it would change its name to Ubisoft, and introduced a new logo known as "the swirl”.
In December 2004, gaming corporation Electronic Arts purchased a 19.9% stake in the firm. Ubisoft referred to the purchase as "hostile" on EA's part. Since 2018, Ubisoft's studios have continued to focus on some franchises, including Assassin's Creed, Tom Clancy's, Far Cry, and Watch Dogs. As reported by Bloomberg Businessweek, while Ubisoft as a whole had nearly 16,000 developers by mid-2019, larger than some of its competitors, and producing 5 to 6 major AAA releases each year compared to the 2 or 3 from the others, the net revenue earned per employee was the lowest of the 4 due to generally lower sales of its games.
After earlier stating its intent to explore blockchain games, Ubisoft announced its Ubisoft Quartz blockchain program in December 2021, allowing players to buy uniquely identified customization items for games and then sell and trade them based on the Tezos currency, which Ubisoft claimed was an energy-efficient cryptocurrency. This marked the first "AAA" effort into blockchain games.
Games by Ubisoft
According to Guillemot, Ubisoft recognized that connected sandbox games, with seamless switches between single and multiplayer modes, provided the players with more fun, leading the company to switch from pursuing single-player-only games to internet-connected ones. Let us take a look at some of the most popular games developed by Ubisoft.
• Assassin's Creed Valhalla: Assassin's Creed Valhalla is an entry in Ubisoft's long-running franchise, continuing the more RPG-focused formula of its predecessors and setting the story during the Viking Age.
• Prince of Persia: Prince of Persia is an action-adventure series created by Jordan Mechner in the late eighties. The original was a beloved 2D platformer, while the series' later incarnation in The Sands of Time set the bar for modern platforming and continues to influence games a decade later.
• Far Cry: Far Cry is a franchise of FPS games with a heavy emphasis on free-roaming first-person shooting gameplay.
• For Honour: A third-person melee-focused arena versus multiplayer game featuring warriors from different periods of time. Initially featuring European Knights, Samurai, and Vikings but subsequentially expanded with other warriors from different times and cultures.
It's undoubtedly true that Ubisoft’s games gained so much success in the industry because of the different concepts put in them. Talking about today's time, many games are created similar to Assassin's Creed and Prince of Persia but when they were initially launched, nobody has created a fantasy gaming world like theirs giving Ubisoft the upper hand with the gamer community.
We hope this blog provided you with an insight into the working of Ubisoft and how it created its way to the top in this competitive industry.
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