Montreal Tech Watch

Yannis Mallat, CEO of Ubisoft Montreal, talked in depth with Gamasutra about what they are planning for the newly created Ubisoft Digital Arts. This was announced 3 months ago, as an animation studio, with a staff of 500 people, making movies from the Ubisoft video games franchises.

In the interview, Yannis Mallat says that they will make short animated movies and that the first one will be based on Assassin’s creed, the video game which will be launched in October this year. The biggest suprise for me though is that they want to make their “movies” interactive. Viewers (players?) will be able to change the storyline, and Yannis Mallat seems confident on Ubisoft’s ability to still make the experience compelling.

The first short movie will be based on upcoming adventure/action game assassin’s creed

Adventure games/movies were very popular at the last decade, with video games companies experimenting with FMV videos. I remember the Wing Commander series who had movie stars and were even featured on imdb when the game launched. We moved since then to strategy games and to FPS games, and then to consoles. It seems that Ubisoft wants to go back to that era, and that they will be (re)creating a new line of product. This is a big bet, as consumers will have to be educated, new distribution means will have to be setup, and I can’t even think of the marketing campaings needed to introduce the idea of interactive movies. But if they succeed on bridging the movie/game divide, they would hit the jackpot and get a market video games companies aren’t yet competing in.

If you ask my opinion, I am not sure I would buy a PS3 or a XBox just to see a movie. Then of course they would want me to get a HDTV. I thought they would make videos avalaible on Joost or any other distributions platforms, much alike Steam by Valve. It looks like the world begins and finishes with video games, playstations and xboxes with Yannis Mallat.