Is companion gaming Ubisoft’s answer to Zynga? (video)

Last night, game publisher Ubisoft unveiled its strategy to get big on social and mobile at an event in San Francisco. Ubisoft’s digital game chief, Chris Early, joined the French video game publisher six months ago to try to bring it into the age of social gaming. Many traditional video game companies are doing the same, launching small efforts one at a time. But those games aren’t getting noticed.

Ubisoft’s own Tick Tock is a case in point. It launched on Facebook last year but got lost in the sea of games. But Ubisoft is now bringing big console game brands to Facebook with the launch of Assassin’s Creed Project Legacy on Facebook. Those games are tightly integrated into what Early calls “companion games,” where the accomplishments in one game can be carried over as rewards to be spent in another. That’s something Zynga, which dominates the social gaming universe, can’t do because it doesn’t have console games.

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Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.