Games Industry Wire

Ubisoft’s sales jumped nearly 37 percent during their latest fiscal year, which ended last month, skyrocketing from $1.07 billion to $1.46 billion over the year, the company announced during their annual call today.
The rise was mostly due to Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas 2 and Assassin’s Creed doing better than expected, they said. Vegas 2 sold close to 2 million, while 6 million copies of Assassin’s Creed were sold. Ubi said they were also happy with their Games for Everyone brand, which includes titles like My Word Coach and My French Coach and brought in $361 million.

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The Walt Disney Co.’s video game arm has reportedly agreed to buy a Chinese game developer as the U.S. entertainment company seeks to expand its presence in China. Disney Interactive Studios plans to buy Chinese company Gamestar, the gaming affiliate said in a statement seen Tuesday. Terms of the deal were kept confidential.
Founded in 2002, Gamestar employs more than 90 staff members and runs offices in the Chinese cities of Shanghai and Wuhan, according to the statement.

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Redwood City, Calif., April 8, 2008 – Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: ERTS) and Epic Games, Inc. today announced that they have expanded their current license agreement. Under the terms of the new agreement, EA will have the right to incorporate the Unreal Engine 3 in more than five upcoming titles currently under development. EA’s original Unreal Engine 3 license agreement was signed in 2006, and this new agreement reflects EA’s confidence in the Unreal Engine by providing EA development teams with industry-leading tools and technologies to best serve the needs of each game.

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The EA-Take-Two saga continues as Electronic Arts (EA) has extended its offer to buy Take-Two from midnight on April 11 to 11:59 p.m., April 18. EA says the extension is in response to action taken by Take-Two on March 26, including putting a “poison pill” in place and pushing its 2008 annual meeting of stockholders back to April 17. Investopedia describes a “poison pill” as a method companies use to discourage hostile takeovers. The goal is to make its stock less attractive to the buyer. The two types of pills include:

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It looks like the Paramount movie studio wants a slice of the lucrative videogame pie. An article on Variety reveals the movie studio will be publishing casual games based on its movie properties. Apparently, its first titles will be ready this year.
“”There’s going to be a slate where in some cases we’re publishing, in some cases we’re co-publishing, or in others we’re funding development and another publisher buys it,” said Sandi Isaacs, Paramount’s senior VP of interactive and mobile. “It’s important for us to have a flexible model.”

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KOEI Entertainment Singapore Pte Ltd today announced that its inaugural production, Romance of the Three Kingdoms Online (English working title), has been launched in Japan on 29th February 2008. This is an all-new Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) offering players a chance to experience life during the historic 2nd and 3rd centuries of China’s Han Dynasty.

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Only hours after Electronic Arts had proposed a $26/ share (approximately $2 billion in total) offer to buy out Take-Two Interactive, the Take-Two board have responded with an absolute “No.”
According to Reuters, Take Two has said that the offer was at a “devaluation” of what the company has done and is trying to do and that it came at “absolutely the wrong time.” Additionally, Take-Two called the bid “highly opportunistic” on the heels of the upcoming release of Grand Theft Auto IV on April 29.
Take-Two has offered to enter discussions with EA the day after GTA IV’s release, on April …read more

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Toshiba today has announced it will discontinue support for its HD-DVD technology. A series of blows has dented the high-definition DVD format in recent weeks: Warner Bros. being the most recent major film studio to pledge its allegiance to rivals Blu-ray and US supermarket giant Wal-Mart ceasing to stock HD-DVD.
Following such moves, Toshiba has announced that promotion for the technology will now come to an end and shipments of players and recorders will wind down, the business looking to close by the end of the month. Speaking to the BBC, Toshiba president Atsutoshi Nishida said, “We concluded that a …read more

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The Entertainment Software Association (ESA), the trade group representing the videogame industry, filed a “Special 301″ report to the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) today pleading for help battling software piracy. The report singles out Canada, China, Malaysia, Russia, and parts of Europe as being extreme problem areas where piracy runs rampant.
“Countries that support computer and videogame piracy discourage publishers from establishing viable and legitimate markets,” said Michael D. Gallagher, CEO of the ESA. “The Special 301 process sends a strong message to them to clean up their act to avoid damaging trade sanctions.

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So what is the big deal? Well, The Sunday Post originally quoted John Hillier, manager of ELSPA’s Intellectual Property Crime Unit as saying “In America, it’s thought 90 per cent of Nintendo DS users are playing pirated games because of R4s,” while discussing the notorious chip that allows easy piracy on Nintendo’s handheld. Wow, that is a an amazingly high percentage of DS piracy
However, a spokesperson for ELSPA is now saying that that, “[John] didn’t quote The Sunday Post on any figures whatsoever.”

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