Ubisoft: Don’t fear free games

The wave of free games available online can help best-selling retail games become bigger hits. Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot this week told MCV the free-to-play category will convert non-gamers into paying gamers.

On Tuesday the firm announced its fourth acquisition of a digital games firm in as many years, French studio Owlient.Guillemot said the publisher was moving quick to keep up with the surprising online revolution”.

A lot of customers are just not buying boxed games, so it’s important for us publishers to reach them as well,” he explained.

We will continue to invest in all our brands to make them bigger and bigger. The more we invest the more business it brings to everyone we work with, including the retailers of boxed games.

So we’ll be selling games either in boxes or online, but customers are online all the time now, we just have to take advantage of that.

Overall this is very good for the industry. We are all working towards engaging consumers with regular games services.”