A new report suggests that a new company could be born from the ashes of the current giant publisher.
"Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of GRTV News. Today we're going to be talking a little bit about Ubisoft. You know, today is the day that we have long heard and long been told in rumours that Nintendo Switch 2 is still banking, still hoping it's going to be called the Super Nintendo Switch, although it seems like that's not going to be the case. But today is the day we're expecting it to be revealed, but Nintendo still hasn't said a single thing about that just yet. So if it happens, it happens, if it doesn't, it doesn't. But one thing we can talk about is a new report that's gone out about Ubisoft, which is a very big games publisher, one of the biggest games publishers in the world, but one that's been facing serious challenges over the last few years really. And it's got to a point where there's been long reports and many reports all talking about the Guillemot family looking to make an alliance with Tencent in some way, maybe in a way to potentially buy out the rest of the control of Ubisoft to be able to say that they fully own it or maybe to sell it, who knows. But the point is that there's a new report now that says that the pair want to form an alliance to team up to control the company and then eventually dismantle it, which is quite an unusual thing to think about on a Thursday morning. But anyway, let's dive on in. So yeah, report, Guillemot family and Tencent seek alliance to control and dismantle Ubisoft. A deal could lead to the creation of a new entity with assets from the existing Ubisoft and with a view to expanding Tencent's business outside of China. So the soap opera over Ubisoft's financial crisis took a new twist today. A new report from Bloomberg claims that the Guillemot family, the company's founders and majority shareholders are in talks with the company's other major shareholder, Chinese giant Tencent, to increase the value of the French company. Although this would be quite drastic from the user's point of view. Both companies will be looking to create a new company using selected assets of the current Ubisoft, i.e. staff, offices, studios and IPs to relaunch and create a growth strategy for Tencent outside China. Such a deal would give Tencent more control of Ubisoft's intellectual property as well as a major step in its expansion outside the China market. The Guillemots, on the other hand, would also secure their control over existing assets from minority shareholders. Tencent and the Guillemot family held 25.4% of Ubisoft's share capital and 29.6% of the voting rights as of 31st of March, as Ubisoft's annual report shows. For the time being, both parties have declined to make statements and Bloomberg reports that its sources have preferred to remain anonymous as the negotiation is still ongoing. Can you imagine a future with a new gaming giant born from the ashes of the current Ubisoft?
Rebirth it, right? And create something new from it. So you'd still have all the same sort of studios working on the same IP, except to be called something else. And if it's going to be in an alliance with Tencent, it might be called something to do with Tencent. Tencent Global or something like that. I don't know. But the point is, is that the Guillemot family have long been looking for a way to regain control of the company they founded. They've been looking at Tencent as a potential ally and Tencent has been making lots of strides as of late, actually, to properly break into the Western market. And you know, you've seen that quite frequently with titles like Diablo Immortal on mobile, Marvel Rivals on PC and consoles and all these games are really quite big and they've come from Tencent in one way or another. So this is, to me, just the next step in that expansion. It's a deal that's probably going to be good for both parties, but whenever I see a deal like this happening, I always wonder what's the catch. And I don't think we've quite seen the catch just yet, so we'll have to stay tuned for that. But yeah, that's all the time that I have in today's episode of GRTV News, but I will be back now tomorrow for the last one of the week. So stay tuned for that. Otherwise, thank you for watching and I'll see you on the next one. Take care, everyone."