Massive going massively multiplayer

With the acquisition of the Tom Clancy brand in March, Ubisoft signaled its intent to enter the massively multiplayer online gaming sphere. Indeed, the French publisher's president and CEO, Yves Guillemot, said that when the deal was announced, a primary motivator for the deal was that it would allow Ubisoft to explore a Tom Clancy-branded massively multiplayer project.

Now, with this week's buyout of World in Conflict-maker Massive Entertainment, Guillemot has apparently found the vehicle for taking the next step into the MMOG market. Speaking at the BMO Capital Markets Interactive Entertainment Conference yesterday, Guillemot said the first order of business from the former Activision Blizzard studio would be to get its feet wet by making small-scale MMOGs.

"We just bought [Massive Entertainment] from [Activision] because those guys have Blizzard so they didn't need that studio as much as we do," said Guillemot. "Those guys are extremely strong in [real-time strategy], so they are going to help us to also get closer to the MMO space. In fact, our goal there is to go first with light MMOs, as those are now and have been extremely popular for a long time in China but are also coming in the US and Europe and are generating lots of good revenue. Our goal is first to start with light MMOs, and then in the future, we will come with RPG and RTS, also in the MMO space."

Massive is currently at work on World in Conflict: Soviet Assault, a console port as well as a PC add-on that expands on the critically acclaimed original from 2007. For more on the game, check out GameSpot's previous coverage.