Now that Ubisoft is the official proprietor of all-things-Clancy, what seems like the next natural step for the franchise? According to Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot, that next step is into the world of MMO’s.

“On MMOs, the investment is really high,” Guillemot said today on a conference call with EDGE, “So we need to maximize the revenue. With the royalties we had [to pay], it was another barrier to creating a [Tom Clancy MMO], because the original investment was diminished by that. Having no fees, it’s going to give us a full return, [so] we’ve really decided now to go for an MMO on the Clancy name, which is big.”

Although a Clancy MMO isn’t currently in production over at Ubisoft, Guillemot claims that groundwork laid by creating previous Clancy titles will enable the development teams to hit the ground running when the time does come. According to Guillemot it’s not a matter of technology, but rather of time and man-power. “We have lots of games in the Clancy franchise that are already multiplayer. So to create an MMO, we need to have larger teams to actually spend the time to create it,” he says.

Given the number of properties that have sprouted from the Tom Clancy name — Ghost Recon, Splinter Cell, and Rainbox Six — there is plenty of fertile soil from which this MMO can grow. “[Taking Clancy massive] was all the question of decision,” says Guillemot. Now that it has IP rights to the Clancy name, as far as Ubisoft’s concerned its all systems go.