Ubisoft has pinched the Driver franchise off Atari's failing grip as the troubled publisher is still trying to streamline its business. 'No worries', say Atari, 'we still have test Drive for all your racing needs'.
Ubisoft has announced that it has concluded an agreement with Atari and Reflections Interactive to acquire the intellectual property and technology rights to the Driver franchise, as well as most of the assets and all of the personnel of Reflections Interactive. The acquisition will be completed for a cash price of USD 24 Million.
Atari will maintain sell-off rights for a three month period for all Driver products except Driver: Parallel Lines, which the company retains until end of calendar 2006. Atari CEO, Bruno Bonnel, explains the reasons behind the sale, In the driving category, we consider Test Drive our key franchise which will require more resources and attention to build it as a landmark of its genre.
Considering that Driv3r was voted The Worst Game of 2005, we can understand Atari's position as Ubisoft have their work cut out for them. The Driver franchise never managed to match gamer expectations, raised by the promising original. Ubisoft however, promise to push a lot of resources its way and Yves Guillemot, CEO of Ubisoft, stated, We look forward to leveraging the unique knowledge of the Ubisoft studios to ensure that Driver will be one of the leading brands of the next generation of consoles.
