Zhang Shule is a columnist for People's Daily Online and People's Post and Telegraph

"Assassin's Creed", which is expected to come to "Chang'an".

9 billion, great value!

Gaming giant Ubisoft has announced the creation of a subsidiary in which Tencent will hold a 25% stake.

This "potato" factory has finally made Assassin's Creed Chinese.

On March 27, French time, Ubisoft, a well-known game manufacturer, announced that it would divest the three major game IPs of "Assassin's Creed", "Far Cry" and "Rainbow Six" to establish a subsidiary.

Tencent will invest 1.16 billion euros (about 9.1 billion yuan) in the subsidiary and acquire a 25% stake.

Ubisoft is a French game producer, publisher and distributor founded by the Guillemot family and has been around for nearly 40 years.

Previously, Ubisoft has produced a number of well-known titles, including Rayman, Far Cry, The Division, Assassin's Creed, and Ghost Recon.

Among them, the "Assassin's Creed" series is one of the masterpieces of triple-A games in the world.

Despite holding a number of classic IPs, Ubisoft's game business has entered a trough due to the lack of new hits for a long time.

After its new work "Star Wars: Outlaws" was released on August 27, 2024, the stock price plummeted as sales did not meet investors' expectations, hitting a 10-year low in September last year.

Interestingly, Ubisoft also has a nickname around the world: potatoes.

The word potato entered the game world in a pejorative form, reportedly as early as 2000.

At that time, it was rumored that a foreign player had built a server powered by 5 potatoes to generate electricity, which was not only extremely slow, but also unusable due to the rotting of the potatoes.

Since then, the term "potato" has been used to refer to slow servers.

Soon, Ubisoft became the pick-up man of "Potato".

Because Ubisoft's servers have been criticized by players around the world, and they have been constantly given the title of "potato", coupled with the fact that it has continuously launched various popular masterpieces after Lehman, it has further intensified the influence of the word "potato" among players.

The announcement mentions that in the future, the subsidiary will focus on building a gaming ecosystem, with the goal of making it truly long-lasting and multi-platform.

With more investment and creative capabilities, it will further improve the quality of the single-player storytelling, with more multiplayer content at a higher frequency, free-to-play, and more social features.

It is worth noting that in 2022, Ma Xiaoyi, senior vice president of Tencent Group, said at an internal event that traditional manufacturers in Europe and the United States have begun to actively embrace GaaS (Game-as-a-Service) and mobile games.

In this split, Tencent investment may be a "lifesaver", but can this veteran game company succeed in turning around?

What does it mean for Tencent, and is IP the focus?

In this regard, the surging news reporter Fan Jialai, the first financial Liu Xiaojie, and the Nandu reporter Lin Wenqi successively had an exchange with Shule.

"Assassin's Creed", this time it is expected to come to "Chang'an". 9 billion, great value!

Tencent has been buying and buying all over the world, and the key to this style of play is to strategically start with high-quality game resources and ensure that there are stable popular products under the goose factory system.

Ubisoft has a good IP at the moment, but it is out of touch with the mobile Internet, and the two sides are just complementary cooperation.

Moreover, once a high-quality IP is transformed into a mobile game, combined with Ubisoft's experience in triple-A masterpieces on stand-alone machines, and then caters to the general trend of multi-terminal interoperable games, it may have miraculous effects.

The IP here is indeed the focus, but it is not simply the market appeal, but the productivity of the 3A masterpiece behind it.

If Tencent wants to become a global game manufacturer in the true sense, it must not only have the most profitable games in the world, but also have masterpieces that can prove its strength.

Ubisoft IP has always had the effect of quality endorsement, especially games like Assassin's Creed, which is a shortcut for Tencent to conquer the world.

Imagine if Assassin's Creed became an open-world online game, and you wanted to enter a country or region and open the map of that country!

At the very least, for hardcore Chinese gamers, they will definitely spend money for dreams like Assassin's Creed Chang'an to come true.

However, can Ubisoft, a veteran game company that is nearly 40 years old, make good games again? The answer may be:

The ability to banknote will activate inspiration,

The new story of Assassin's Creed is worth looking forward to.

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