Gameloft developing proprietary gaming network

The French publisher Gameloft is working on its own mobile gaming network.

In an interview with Gamasutra, publishing senior vice president Gonzague de Vallois admitted that it was "dangerous" to use partners like DeNA and GREE rather than building direct relationships with its customers.

"Those guys have been pretty successful in Asia," he said, "and we have a strong presence in Japan, so we've been working with them in Japan. On the feature phone business, not yet on the smartphone business. DeNA, mainly."

However, de Vallois claimed it is, "dangerous that we have somebody in the middle, that will dictate whether the consumer will take." Discussions about building a more agreeable working relationship are ongoing, but Gameloft is also developing its own mobile social network.

"Yes, that's also something that we are working on, and investigating to see if it makes sense to. We always value the consumer experience, so if it makes sense to add this component to our games, then we will do it -- and that's something we are studying now."

"We are still looking to find the right way to get there. There are some very strong leaders in the space that are hard to catch up with, so we are still investigating on finding what we can bring to the platform that the others don't bring."