Gamigo's Ralph Frefat

It's the most important thing at the moment. For example, I don't want to judge competitors, but if you take Frogster for example - also a German company - they have Runes of Magic (which was offered to us, but unfortunately we didn't take it...). But if they didn't have that one title, they'd be dead today - the other one they had before was a flop.

That's a risky strategy, but they had some luck. But in the future, if you sign a new title, you really don't know if it will be a success or not.

They never have been - they always waited to look into the markets a little bit, and then they acquired someone. And this is what will happen this time again - but on the other hand it was a completely new business model in an area where they didn't have any experience.

If you look back a few years the revenues weren't that great, so it wasn't a lot of interest. But now those revenues are starting to grow you have some under-developed countries - even in Europe - where the free-to-play model isn't working so well, but I suspect it will grow in the next couple of years there and will be more successful.

I think it's a lack of experience. That's the first thing - but they're all under pressure right now. In the last few years everything was fine and they had good numbers - but now the revenues are still increasing, but the profits are going down. Shareholders are demanding new ways to make money, and this is one of the opportunities that they have.

Yes, but shareholders are investing for the future, not the present. If you tell them that this is the business model of the future, and you expect numbers that are much higher then today...

I think online has helped a lot, because it's not a closed system, so every kind of company that had a good game could spread it - people could get into those games, play them, and if they spent money then the company gets that money directly.

If you're talking about Nike or Adidas, it's a retail system that's dominating there - and that's what's happening at retail in the videogames space with the big publishers. It was a secure business for them because they owned the shelves - they bought them. But online was completely different.

Look at it this way - if you have a retail game and you have a good brand then people will go into the shop and see that brand. They'll see that the screenshots are good, the text on the back of the box is good, and they'll buy it. If they take it home and that game is s*** then okay, the money is gone.

But in the free-to-play model you have to convince the person to stay, and deliver quality. That's the most important thing for the future of a game - you have to produce quality so that people stay there. It's so easy for them to go away and try something else.