We wanted to leverage the identity of this brand to say, now, as a new gaming specialist company, Nacon will position itself as an expert, specialist, premium, high level, high quality group. This controller is among the best in the world. The Revolution controller is one of the best, if not the best, pro esports premium names in the world. Nacon, which we created five or six years ago to create a premium brand of accessories, among which now the flagship is the Revolution controller for PS4 - we’re among the few third-party accessories manufacturers with an official seal of approval from Sony, an official license. The name Bigben wasn’t conveying something related to gaming. But this name was conveying an identity that the was the original business of the group, founded in 1981 by its current CEO, when we were selling watches and clocks. I’m still picking up the phone and answering as Bigben Benoit. GamesBeat: When you’re talking to the game industry, do people recognize the name Nacon more than the name Bigben?Ĭlerc: For me, it would be difficult to say, working for Bigben for 17 years. We’ll stay inside of the Bigben group, but part of the shares of Bigben in Nacon will go public on the stock exchange in the weeks to come, in order for us to raise money to accelerate toward our ambitions. This is the case with Nacon, which will be a 100 percent subsidiary of Bigben. It was necessary, in order to achieve the ambition that I mentioned earlier, to regroup the energy of the pure gaming people inside the group in one single body. We’re listed on the stock exchange in Paris. GamesBeat: All those companies and studios, they’ll be moving under the Nacon brand, and that’s the part that’s going to be now the next move, making all that public?Ĭlerc: Absolutely. We have four companies that 100 percent belong to BigBen, development companies, and they represent seven studios, and then one studio, RaceWard, which we have strong links there. We have a minority stake, which is roughly 40 percent or something. The last studio I mentioned is RaceWard, in Milan. They developed Warhammer Chaosbane for us, a Diablo-like, and they also did How to Survive for another publisher. Spiders, RPG and action games, Eko, sports games and top-down action-RPG games. They’re doing action and turn-based titles. And Rock Factory in Montreal, so three studios. They did The Council, and they’re working on Vampire the Masquerade, a new game that will unfold another chapter in that world to create this very specific new genre that they call the narrative RPG. This is three studios: one in Paris, one in Bordeaux, Big Bad Wolf, which is specializing in role-playing narrative titles. They’re currently working on our biggest project by far, which is the next Test Drive Unlimited game. They’re doing off-road racing with WRC (World Championship Rally), and they’re doing two-wheel racing with Isle of Man TT. The first company is KT Racing, Kylotonn. I’ll give you the company names and studios they have. Those are eight teams with some passion and some expertise in some fields. All of the studios have an identity and some specificities when it comes to the games that they’re able and willing to develop. One of the companies, RaceWard in Italy, we have a stake in the company that we could raise in the months and years to come to have a majority. GamesBeat: The acquisitions you made in 20, was that the ramp leading to this?Ĭlerc: We bought five companies. We think that with the next generation of consoles that’s ready to come out, with the cloud, which is also the next big step technologically and industrially and business-wise for our industry, and the digitalization, which I’m not teaching you anything - that we’re leading as an industry now, this was the right time for us also to go bigger, in order to occupy a position at this critical moment in our market history. We have the workforce, the knowledge, the position, the studios now, everything we need, the muscles, if I may say so, and the brain also, to fuel an ambition that we’ve voiced publicly, which is to become one of the leading midsize publishers in our industry in the three-to-five years to come.Īnd the other reason, maybe, to mention the most important ones, is external. First, an internal one: We as a company, as a publishing business unit, and an accessory business unit - I’ll elaborate on that part later on - but Nacon is gathering those two activities for reasons that I will explain. GamesBeat: Why go public now with Bigben/Nacon? Why is the timing good for this?īenoit Clerc: This is a conjunction of several parameters. This is an edited transcript of our interview.
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