UbiSoft And Gameloft Merger Results

This new possibility of UbiSoft and Gameloft merging... Well, it got me thinking what might lie in the future of gaming industry at least in the European gaming industry. Do you want to read, what I think?

Ok, for the starters, let’s presume that since Guillemot brothers still have such a strong grip in both UbiSoft and Gameloft, they will be able to merge the companies and the entity that comes out of this marriage is going to be financially solid and needs not to worry about outside interests.

These arrangements will probably take a good part of the year 2005, but in the end, we have a company that has video/computer and mobile games under the same roof. We will have a company that has a good product slate, which is also transferable between platforms. Electronic Arts might be making a disservice for itself by forcing UbiSoft to transform into something new. On the other hand, Electronic Arts will see the value of its share to go up and might make a sizeable profit with it in the end.

Ovum Consulting estimated the worldwide market size for mobile games to be 1,9 billion euros. This is an amount that will increasingly grab the game companies attention. I bet that as big game companies invest some more resources on the field, the old balance between operators and independent developers will suffer. It won’t a problem for a massive game company to run an operation similar to virtual operator. This area will see some interesting developments, especially in Europe, as the mobile/wireless market here is more open and more interoperable than in States.

Interesting times...