Ubisoft has acquired the Swedish developer of World In Conflict, Massive Entertainment. The studio was closed following the Activision-Blizzard merger, though there was never much doubt over the future of the successful development team. The rights to the World In Conflict franchise also pass to the publisher, and follows a trend of cuts and aquisitions by publishers including Atari picking the rights to Ghostbusters and THQ dropping several of its studios to focus on core titles.

Ubisoft has officially announced the sequel to the popular 2003 action-adventure game, Beyond Good & Evil. The long-awaited Nietzsche-inspired title, Beyond Good & Evil 2 was revealed at Ubisoft’s recent Ubidays expo alongside a couple of screenies and a teaser trailer - enjoy!

The official name of Ubisoft’s air combat game has been unveiled: Tom Clancy’s HAWX. That’s High Altitude Warfare X. Presumably Ubisoft was waiting until they’d acquired the rights to Clancy’s name before revealing this nonsensical title. HAWX is a flight action game that bares a resemblance to Ace Combat, with a touch of Ghost Recon Advanced Warfare. Set in 2012 there’s a jump-in co-op campaign, online battles with 16 players and simplified flight model that will make it easy to fight and issue orders to your wingman without smashing into the ground.

Total PC Gaming fully opposes the unnecessary use of ‘X’, ‘Z’ or any other characters that may be used to make a game sound ’street’ for ‘da yoof’.

Ubisoft announced today that it has acquired full intellectual property rights to the Tom Clancy name from Mr Tom Clancy. The acquisition means Ubisoft can create future Tom Clancy titles including films, books and merchandise as well as games, completely free of any royalty payments.

While the sum involved was undisclosed, it is likely to be in the region of £15 million, based on Ubisoft’s previous 2007-2008 financial year cash position of €150 million, compared to its current €130 million estimate.

“The Tom Clancy brand is recognised around the world for offering exciting video games, films and books,” said Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot, “The most recent example of such value creation through brand management is the EndWar book, based on the video game story, which has been in the NY Times top 10 Paperback Mass Market Fiction best-seller list for the last four weeks.”

Financial wisdom aside, the move by the French publisher signifies an unofficial severance from the man behind the brand, as the amount of input Tom Clancy had into every game created under the name was questionable anyway.

Ubisoft has released new footage demonstrating the capabilities of Far Cry 2’s ‘Dunia’ engine. There’s no combat, but the three vids show off environmental features including mutilated trees that regrow their branches. Name aside, Far Cry 2 is unrelated to the original CryTek game, and is this time set in Africa rather than a tropical island. It’s being developed by Ubisoft’s Montreal studio and promises to offer an open-world FPS with some of the most realistic physics and AI yet. Far Cry 2 is currently slated for release sometime before the summer.