From the days of Java and Nokia N-Gage, it was early onto iPhone with Kroll.
It's since worked with big brand - EA for Battlefield: Bad Company, with Adidas for its MiCoach range, and a Bruce Lee fighting game.
And most recently, it joined up with Zynga for its first big free-to-play title The Respawnables, which is due out on Android very soon.
Pocket Gamer: What's it been like releasing your first free-to-play game with Zynga?
Xavier Carrillo Costa: Working with Zynga has been a positive experience. It has a great team that's easy to work with. We've learnt a lot about what publishing a free-to-play title really means.
The Respawnables was our first free-to-play experience at this scale and having Zynga dealing with publishing, marketing and user acquisition has allowed us to be focused on the gameplay and important game metrics.
The iOS version of The Respawnables came out in December 2012, so why have you waited so long to release the Android version?
We have been very busy working in parallel on two areas:
Polishing and iterating on single player gameplay and balance, and multiplayer, and introducing features including Ghostbusters and Men in Black branded items thanks to our deal with Sony Pictures.
We're also been dealing with user feedback and requests: we have been receiving up to 40,000 mails per day.
So The Respawnables has come later to Android but it's much more polished and with more content.
In addition, we've been developing technology and a lot of code related to the back-end. We are operating the game servers ourselves, so working on optimising connections, piracy management, players secured profiles, etc.
What's the reaction been so far?
The reaction has been very positive, over 4 million people have downloaded the game in 6 months [on iOS] and we are even seeing gamers in the forum organising themselves into guilds - this feature is not officially supported yet.
We have also received a lot of very positive feedback from players who have embraced the game.
What are the most surprising things you learned about operating a free-to-play game?
We were aware of the importance of metrics but have faced the reality of scale, of being overwhelmed with gigabytes of data and learning to make the right priorities and choices.
The importance of quality versus quantity when it comes to user acquisition is vital.
Also, players are very demanding when it comes to quality and penalise you in reviews when you fail, but equally they react positively and even upgrade a previous rating when you communicate with them or include their requests.
Finally we've been surprised how well the free-to-play model has been received by The Respawnables players, both by payers and by non-payers.
Can you explain how your deal with Sony to include characters from MIB and Ghostbusters came about?
We had a very good relationship with Sony Mobile - the former Sony Ericsson team - because we were a launch partner for Xperia Play with Bruce Lee Dragon Warrior, and then with Battlefield Bad Company 2 with EA.
Overall, the idea has been to innovate licensing in mobile games and mash-up movie IP with The Respawnables.
Therefore, we've been offering characters, weapons and gadgets from the Ghostbusters and Men In Black worlds in our game.
Further to this experience, what's your business strategy for Digital Legends going forward?
After testing different business and development models - own IP, pay-per-download, co-production and work-for-hire - we've realised that developing your own IP is what generates real value for a company.
Therefore we're now focused on creating new IPs and building up The Respawnables.
We may consider some second party developments, though, if it gives us control over game development and IP creation, as well as the production muscle to develop something great and working with a talented team from which we can learn.
The Respawnables is coming out on Nvidia Shield, so what's your view on devices like Shield and Ouya?
It is a sign that the industry is changing and investigating new platforms and new opportunities in the space emerging between mobiles, tablets and consoles.
From our perspective, it was easy to bring The Respawnables to Project Shield and it looks and plays really well.
Of course, what really matters is whether players will adopt these devices or not. We'll let the market decide on their success.
Thanks to Xavier for his time
