Ubisoft

Ubisoft Entertainment SA (/ˈjuːbisɒft, -sɔːft/; French: [ybisɔft]; formerly Ubi Soft Entertainment SA) is a French video game company headquartered in Montreuil with several development studios across the world. Its video game franchises include Rayman, Raving Rabbids, Prince of Persia, Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, Just Dance, and the Tom Clancy’s series. As of March 2018, Ubisoft is the fifth largest publicly traded game company in the Americas and Europe in terms of revenue and market capitalisation, after Activision Blizzard, Electronic Arts, Take-Two Interactive and CD Projekt.The Guillemot family had established themselves as a support business for farmers in the Brittany province in northwest France and nearby regions, including into the United Kingdom. The five sons of the family – Christian, Claude, Gérard, Michel, and Yves – helped with the sales, distribution, accounting and management of the company with their parents before university. All five gained business experience while at university, which they brought back to the family business after graduating. The brothers came up with the idea of diversification to sell other products of use to farmers; Claude began with selling CD audio media, and later the brothers expanded to computers and additional software which included video games.In the early 1980s, they saw that the costs of buying computers and software from a French supplier was more expensive than buying the same materials in the United Kingdom and shipping to France, and came upon the idea of a mail-order business around computers and software. Their mother said they could start their own business this way as long as they managed it themselves and equally split its shares among the five of them. Their first business was Guillemot Informatique, founded in 1984. They originally only sold through mail order but soon were getting orders from French retailers, since they were able to undercut other suppliers by up to 50% of the cost of new titles. By 1986, this company was earning about 40 million French francs (roughly US$5.8 million at that time). In 1985, the brothers established Guillemot Corporation for similar distribution of computer hardware. As demand continued, the brothers recognised that video game software was becoming a lucrative property, and decided that they needed to get into the development side of the industry, already having insight on the publication and distribution side. Ubi Soft (formally named Ubi Soft Entertainment S.A.) was founded by the brothers on 28 March 1986. The name “Ubi Soft” was selected to represent “ubiquitous” software.