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A lot of the announcements that I've seen from Ubisoft have been pretty impressive, and it seems like there's this upward trajectory happening.
YG: The goal is really to do high-quality games. That's where we're firm on. When we know that the game will be well-received by consumers, all of our creators who are gamers love that.
In your early days, when you were doing the PC Engine gray market release in France, was that sanctioned by NEC?
YG: It was forbidden by the company at that time, but at the same time, we were discussing with them the possibility of doing their distribution. In a way, they were happy to make a test. It's not that we were doing that totally against them. They knew we were doing it, and we were speaking with them regularly and checking if we could do it in a bigger way.
Was it relatively successful there?
YG: It was very successful. The machine did well and the software was doing well, but since they didn't react fast enough, all the other machines came out, and then they were dead.
Rayman with Michel Ancel was the first big thing that was internally developed by Ubisoft as a software house, right?
YG: Uh-huh.
And he was seventeen when that happened?
YG: He was older than that. When he came in, he was seventeen, but when the game happened, he was 23, I think.
The parent company is active in other arenas as well, right?
YG: It's not the parent company, it's the holding company that has investment in many of our companies. Yes, they are in Gameloft, and in another corporation to do accessories. They can license different worlds in the same environment.
What percentage of the income of the holding company is Ubisoft?
YG: Ubisoft is the biggest company.
In Japan, you're UBI, but in the West you're Ubi. Why the change there?
YG: It's easy for people to remember, and UBI is easier in Japan.
Why did you choose Montreal for Ubisoft Digital Arts?
YG: That's where we have the largest studio, so it's easier for us to add that new studio beside the other one. It's easier to regroup people, and to cross-cut designs between the two.
Are you at all interested in moving into the feature film arena with this sort of thing?
YG: Yeah, we're very excited about that. But the goal is to make sure that at the end of the day we do better games. Yes, we want to do movies, but our primary goal is to make sure that we can enhance the games that we will do.
And I assume you want to stay strictly in the digital realm? Even if you did features, they would not be live-action?
YG: No, the goal is really to do more digital.
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