Ubisoft Acquires Sunflowers, Along With Anno ...

Ubisoft Acquires Sunflowers, Along With Anno Franchise

One of the key differences between Ubisoft and Electronic Arts is that, whenever EA takes over another company, it's usually bad news - or leads to bad news, several years down the road. Whereas most of Ubisoft's acquisitions are reason for joy and/or hope. Suffice to remember they were the ones who pushed on with the Settlers series after taking over Blue Byte, and later resurrected the (Heroes of) Might and Magic franchise, following 3DO's bankrupcy. There are of course more examples, but these two are of particular interest in the context of Ubi's latest announcement: the acquisition of Sunflowers, who happen to own the Anno / A.D. brand. Coincidence? I doubt it.

The deal is not yet finalized, but the acquisition is expected to close in the next couple of months. At that point, Ubisoft will own not only the Sunflowers company and the Anno brand, but also 30% of Related Designs - the studio that developed the recent Anno 1701 and, according to the communique, is also working on "a future Anno title". There's no title specified, but as far as we know, this should be the Anno 1701 add-on that Sunflowers was planning to release this summer. Although we surely wouldn't mind a whole new squel.

Below are a couple of statements given by the bosses of Ubisoft and Sunflowers:

"With the acquisition of Anno, Ubisoft reinforces its position in the real-time strategy market. Anno, along with Ubisoft's The Settlers, is one of the most well known franchises in Germany, reaching a wide audience that includes not only traditional gamers, but also women and families. We are proud to add another top-quality brand to our rich portfolio and we are looking forward to bringing the brand to an even wider audience," said Yves Guillemot, president and chief executive officer of Ubisoft.

Mr. Adi Boiko, cofounder of SunFlowers stated "I'm glad to confide Anno to Ubisoft, a company known for the innovation and creativity of its development teams. The brand will benefit from Ubisoft's global strength, allowing new audiences to discover the pleasure of empire building through new Anno games."

On a personal note, if Ubi plans to share graphics technologies among their strategy franchises, I hope they'll pick the Anno engine for future Settlers games, and not the other way around.

(N.B. Archive text, links removed)