Ubisoft Buys Tom Clancy, Making An MMO?
In a money saving move, Ubisoft announced today that is has acquired the rights to Tom Clancy's name for video games and related products including books, movies and merchandising. While details aren't clear, it is apparently estimated they paid somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 million dollars, with more payments to be made in 2009 and 2010. they say they will save 7-8 million a year on licensing fees.
Obviously they are thinking of the long term here, with payment of that magnitude, which shows we're probably going to keep getting franchise games, (and new franchises, I would assume), for the next decade at least. If that means I get more Splinter Cell games as good as Chaos Theory, then I'm ecstatic. Really, even Double Agent wasn't too bad.
Still, that's a lot of money to pay for a brand, and it seemed strange that they would pay so much, until I saw this.
During a call regarding the IP acquisition, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot said, "On MMOs, the investment is really high. So we need to maximize the revenue. With the royalties we had [to pay], it was another barrier to creating a [Tom Clancy MMO], because the original investment was diminished by that."Having no fees, it's going to give us a full return, [so] we've really decided now to go for an MMO on the Clancy name, which is big."
That clarifies things, if they are planning an MMO, owning these rights will save them TONS of cash. I am already brainstorming what kind of game this might be. I would love to be a Splinter Cell agent, scouting ahead for a team of high firepower soldiers like in Ghost Recon and weakening defenses. Or perhaps it would be a new game altogether... still, I can dream.
Ubisoft Acquires Rights To Tom Clancy Name For Games, Media [Gamasutra]
Ubisoft Suiting Up for Tom Clancy MMO [Next-Gen]
Sgt. Sausagepants
Posted to MMOs, Video Games on 20 March 2008
Other stuff like this: Copyrights, Tom Clancy, Ubisoft
