Ubisoft: EU Is Important
The economy (of the US) is slowly sliding into the crapper. I know it, you know it, Bush admits to it. The really irritating part of all of this is that my passion happens to be based heavily in other countries, and as a result other countries are starting to get prioritized.
Speaking at Games Convention, Ubisoft expressed just this. The increasing value of the pound and euro, vs the declining US dollar has resulted in an interesting side effect for them:
First, our money - the pound or the euro - is very strong and because of that the turnover from those countries is heavier than they used to be,So for Ubisoft turnover Europe is actually more important than the US now, and by more than 5 per cent. It's become a very strong market for us.
Now, Ubisoft really hasn't put anything out in recent history that I've been gaga over, Haze was an abomination and Prince of Persia was never really my bag (except when Broderbund worked on it), so I can't say this makes me too terribly sad. This may be good news to the EU, however. You folks seem to be put on the proverbial back burner more than I care to admit, waiting sometimes as much as a year to see a localized version of a US or Japanese title.
Ubisoft: Europe is now our biggest territory [gamesindustry.biz]
Asterick
Posted to Hot Stuff, Video Games on 27 August 2008
· Comments (5)
Other stuff like this: europe, most important big time, territories, ubisoft
wait game developers finaly discover money has differt value?
A Doller price tag = A europe price tag. (they only chance the $ in a euro sign.) So we pay a lot more anyhow.
You think the worst that happens to us Europeans is waiting up to a year (really, sometimes it's even longer) for a game?
Try not even getting a game. Explain to me why I can't play Culdcept Saga to name but one.
I hope this actually happens (with more developers besides Ubisoft) and Europe is finally seen as the legitimate gaming market that it is. And not just for crappy sports games and FPSers.
Because Europe is such a strong market for them, you would think that they would start to treat European gamers better. But no. Think about it. They already treat European gamers like crap (big games not getting release dates even after the US release, games getting released over a year after the US, games not getting a release at all, etc) but they still get huge profits. Why change a winning formula?
European gamers might complain about their treatment, but if they continue to support business practices like these, the companies have no reason to change what they are doing. They seem to be getting on very well indeed.
This inequality is a historical blip in the radar. The dollar will grow stronger and the current advantage the Euro has will disappear. This has happened before and it will happen again (not that our European friends should ever play second fiddle to either the US or Japanese market).
@scut - the dollar has been weaker than the pound as long as I can remember (it used to be worth around 67p; more recently it's bobbing around the 50p area). Barring miracles it's not going to overtake the pound, and mightn't even manage to overtake the euro (80p at time of posting) the way things are going.