Guillemot severs last link with Ubi Soft

Guillemot this week announced that it had, after a protracted divorce, severed its fulfilment contract (or was it the other way around) with Ubi Soft, the French games outfit.

This makes Guillemot, also French-owned, a "pure player in the interactive leisure hardware and accessories market", the company says. Guillemot's three logistics units will now focus all their energies on supporting its Hercules and Thrustmaster brands.

Guillemot reports a "strong sales dynamic" for Hercules and Thrustmaster in recent months, "promising extremely satisfactory order levels for the remainder of 2002".

However, the loss of the Ubi Soft contract has hurt sales revenues to the tune of €27.6m in the second half of FY2001(ended August 2001) and €37.7m for the first half of 2002.

Guillemot is currently reorganising its North American operations, and there appears to be job losses, hardware review site HardOCP reports. The company has also focused all retail energies in Europe at the high-end around ATI, ditching Nvidia as a partner. It will be interesting to see the impact that solus ATI distribution rights for European retailers will have on Guillemot's sales. ®

Guillemot statement