Quote of the Moment: Social gaming 'tailor-made' for Disney

"It became pretty clear to us that game-playing on social networks is real, here to stay. There are obviously a multitude of people that are already playing. There are about a half a billion people who are members of Facebook already, about 40 percent of those people participate in game playing.
"I mentioned in my remarks that the customer base is pretty diverse, from 18 to post-50. It's dual gender, meaning it's not - it doesn't skew just in the men's direction, which we know a lot of other games do.

"It seemed tailor-made for not only Disney-branded games, but Marvel and ESPN, and we really like the opportunity. The other thing that was really interesting to us is that we now have over 50 million people who are members of various Disney, ESPN and ABC groups on Facebook. So we begin with a very, very solid base of people to market to and when you add to that the over 40 million people who are playing Playdom games already, that seemed pretty compelling to us."

-Disney CEO Bob Iger explains the reasoning behind the company's recent purchase of social gaming company Playdom in a an investor's conference call

Megamind meets FarmVille, Top 25 Facebook games for November [PM Linkage]

FarmVille's 24-hour Megamind movie promo kicks off Thursday [Games.com]

Top 25 Facebook Games for November 2010 [Inside Social Games]

BringIt raises $1.5M, helps RockYou generate revenue by putting a game inside a game [Venture Beat]

Facebook Makes Signing Into Mobile Apps Incredibly Easy [Mashable]

Redken Video Game Beckons Girls to Hair Salons [NY Times]

The Business Of Magic: How the Disney marketing machine generates billions [Newsweek]

Assassin's Creed creator Ubisoft promises more social games in 2011

The company behind games like CSI: Crime City for Facebook and the Assassin's Creed franchise, Ubisoft, says that social games will be a bigger part of its strategy for 2011. The French publisher told All Things Digital that more than 15 percent of its employees in the Ubisoft San Francisco offices will be dedicated to "companion gaming." This new strategy involves the company using Facebook games to promote coinciding consoles releases. Remember the Assassin's Creed Facebook game, Project Legacy, released to promote the second game in the series?

Yeah, you're going to see a lot more of that in 2011. The third-largest independent videogames publisher hopes to turn this trend into dollars, though its previous efforts haven't caught on like competitors such as Zynga's games. And almost inversely, Ubisoft VP of Digital Publishing Chris Early said, "Digital will not kill physical. There will always be support for a certain percent."

While he is likely correct, I'm not sure that's the mindset you want when investing 15 percent of your developers into an online-only platform. "You have to look at the top 10 sellers, or rely on a friend," Early said to ATD of the issues surrounding online game sales. "There's a significant hurdle to digital." This couldn't be more true on Facebook, and it's quite a hurdle for Ubisoft to jump over. Can the company can do it with backing from iconic industry names like Assassin's Creed and Prince of Persia? Companies including Konami, EA and Disney (and Ubisoft) have tried before and failed, so here is their chance to prove it.

[Image Credit: Ubisoft]

What do you think of the potential girth of promotional Facebook games to come from Ubisoft? Do you think it will be successful using this strategy?