Completely cutting out the middle man, Ubisoft announced yesterday they’ve fully acquired the IP rights to the Tom Clancy name. The agreement seems to not only include video games, but also books, merchandising products and even movies.
The price of the agreement wasn’t revealed but the company updated their financial earnings for the end of fiscal 2007/2008 to around 130 million Euros ($204 million) instead of 150 million Euros ($235.4 million), which may hint the agreement cost around 20 million Euros. Also in light of the deal, Ubisoft would be saving around 5 million Euros ($7.8 million) each year in royalty charges.
In related news, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot revealed in a follow-up conference call that the company is pursuing a Tom Clancy-related MMO. While the MMO plans were on their table for a few years, royalty charges prevented the game from coming to fruition. Now with the Tom Clancy in its pocket, plans are a-go; Ubisoft has the technology to create a MMO and estimated the game would have a $40 to $50 million budget.
Guillemot said, "Having no royalties, it’s going to help us to have a full return, so we are ready and decide now to go for an MMO on the Clancy name — which is big, because you have on one side Splinter Cell, Sam Fisher, the Rainbow [Sixes] the GRAW and all the other new creations that we have. So this will make that product [a] really big product."
Since acquiring Red Storm Entertainment in 1998 after the release of the first Tom Clancy-related game, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six, Ubisoft has been cranking out plenty of related games, including the Ghost Recon series, Splinter Cell series (the fifth game Conviction is on the way), additional Rainbow Six games (Vegas 2 was just released) and future releases of EndWar (delayed till Q2 2008) and Air Combat.
[Via Ubisoft]
