In an interview with Inside Mobile Apps, Gameloft's senior vice president of marketing and sales Gonzague de Vallois gave an overview of the company's take on 2012.

He also spoke about problems it was having integrating the freemium model into its existing games and their fanbase.

Protests

"While our first hits were more hard core games like Modern Combat or N.O.V.A., we've found that the user base has become much more diversified, now consisting of a more casual audience, and thus we are extending our range of games accordingly with games like Oregon Trail or Fantasy Village," said Vallois.

"In this market, our casual games represented finally more than 50 percent of our revenues."

Gameloft certainly had it's fingers burned by its own fans when it attempted to retroactively squeeze Hero of Sparta 2 into a freemium, ad-powered business model, as well as howls of protest when it switched Dungeon Hunter from a story-based RPG into a wave-based free-to-play action game.

After angry fans voiced their opinions Vallois' statements seem to point out Gameloft is learning from these mistakes.

"The freemium business model is experiencing very strong growth in the video game industry as a whole," he says.

"At Gameloft, we are embracing this trend but are also making sure we keep the perfect user experience and learn from consumers' feedback."

Lofty aspirations

When asked about the possibility of a Gameloft mobile social network, similar to those of GREE and DeNA, Vallois pointed out that development was already underway.

"We are indeed working on the development of a mobile social gaming network," he said.

"The target is to launch it [in the] first half of 2012. The goal is to keep enriching our fans' gaming experience through new innovative features."

Future value

Finally Vallois revealed how Gameoft took the chance to gain experience working with HTML5 on a recent Google+ title, with a view to using it more in the future.

"HTML5 is definitely a technology we are looking at very closely," he said.

"We recently launched GT Racing: Motor Academy on Google+ and we will keep learning about this technology. Windows Phone is also a platform we are following closely, specifically with the launch of Windows Phone 8 in 2012."

"We also expect some innovation in the TV gaming space as we feel there is value to bring to consumers here," he added.

[source: Inside Mobile Apps]