Ubisoft had been one of the few major publishers along with Activision that's preferred to sit out of the smartphone gaming race.

However, in recent months, this strategy appears to have shifted, with the French publisher increasingly embracing the format with spin-off titles from its leading console franchises such as Assassin's Creed Multiplayer: Rearmed and the upcoming Price of Persia: Classic.

We spoke to Thomas Paincon, its online brand marketing manager, about this new focus for the company, and what it means for the previously strong working relationship between Ubisoft and Gameloft.

Pocket Gamer: How important is digital distribution for Ubisoft, and do you see its importance growing?

Thomas Paincon: Digital distribution is important for Ubisoft and we are now in a position to benefit from all the opportunities of digital distribution whatever the platform is (PC, console, tablets...) thanks to a growing expertise on marketing, tools and of course products that fit well with this distribution.

Existing players but, more importantly, new players are more and more used to digital distribution. This type of distribution enables us to take risk directly in front of consumers and enable us to capitalise on original concept or experience.
From Dust is an example of this strategy with more than half a million units sold only through digital platform (XBLA, PSN, PC). Assessing that 25 percent of overall Ubisoft resources are dedicated to digital is an evidence of our commitment to digital platform and distribution.

The company has been bringing an increasing number of its big franchises like Assassin's Creed to iOS. Is this a trend that will continue in 2012?

Our strategy on iOS is to capitalise on our creativity and knowledge of our production team to propose new and adapted experience across our existing big franchise.

But the goal is not to make simple port from our existing games but propose experience that take advantage of ios players habits and platform features and expand franchise but keeping the original DNA of this franchise.

You mention Assassin’s Creed, which is a good example. We released ACM Rearmed which is based on one of the AC latest pillar - multiplayer. It proposes real-time multiplayer through Game Center with AC characters, environments, and special abilities that you are familiar with from console games.

But we [also have] AC Recollection, based on another pillar -artistic flavour. So you’ll be able to experience the whole AC story through a board game where strategy to use the right assets will be key.

The goal is also to have relations between different platforms through companion gaming. Meaning that you’ll be able to play Assassin’s Creed iOS games and unlock some rewards that you’ll be able to use on AC console title when you’ll be back home and create a whole AC gaming ecosystem.

Finally, iOS gives us also the opportunity to create new brands such as Monster Burner that was developed by Ubisoft Montreal and exclusive to iPad platform.

Previously Ubi has licensed out its titles to Gameloft for smartphone games (Settlers, Splinter Cell, Prince of Persia). Is this something that will continue alongside the company's own mobile strategy?

Gameloft has always been and will remain a partner for Ubisoft. Mobile games marketing has changed over the past four years and iOS platform gives the opportunity to be unique, which is a big change from former mobile market that required versions adapted to each mobile device.

We think that our production team has the creativity and knowledge to develop innovative experiences on iOS platform and this is taken into account from the beginning of each project.

This is the reason why we have more games and, in future, it will be also the case in terms of mobile games from our internal studio.

Is freemium social titles the next step for Ubisoft on mobiles?

We are exploring all types of business models for our mobile games, as evolution is quick and not all of our games are adapted to every business models.

Thus, freemium business models particularly adapted to social titles is one of the many project we are exploring. Mastering free-to-play on PC and Facebook will also enable us to apply best practice on mobile platform.

Currently Ubisoft exclusively releases its mobile games on iPhone and iPad. Has the company looked into the other mobile formats and, if so, what persuaded it to focus on iOS?

Ubisoft is well known and recognised for its creativity and innovation. This last word means that we are keen on proposing experience on all the latest technology and platforms.

We were the first one to believe and be successful on Wii console as well as on Microsoft Kinect device. And it will be also the case for current and next mobile platforms.

7 million games are currently downloaded daily on iOS, which makes it a great gaming platform [for our] franchises to entertain all type of gamers, but it doesn’t prevent us expanding or create new ones on other mobile platforms.
Thanks to Thomas for his time