Bulkypix's Dondaine on why it only takes a 10% publishing cut

Formed from the ashes of Vivendi Mobile's inhouse Paris studio, Bulkypix was one of the first European developers to focus specifically on iPhone.

It's since expanded, becoming a publisher for other French and European developers.

And it has bigger plans for 2010.

We caught up with COO Vincent Dondaine to find out what's in store.

Vincent Dondaine: We're really building our presence as a publisher in Europe and we're opening an office in San Francisco too. It's important to have an office in the US to deal with American and Canadian developers.

So we're expanding fast. Last year we released 12 iPhone games. In 2010, we're going to release 30 games on iPhone, iPad, Android and other mobile platforms. We're now working with 13 developers.

Yes. It's very important for us. We have two creative teams and we will continued to be a developer. This is one reason we're different to other publishers because we speak the same language as developers.

Many publishers have forgotten there's a human element behind the creativity, which we think is really important. It's compatible with the way you run your business.

Well, there's obviously Gameloft in France. We want to be a big publisher, but not like that. We're more like Chillingo, but we have a different approach because we make and publish games and speak the same language as developers.

We also take a smaller cut of revenue. You can't repeat the carrier model for Java games. That's not good business for developers. We ask for 10 percent of revenue, which I think is a good mutual opportunity. We're a growing publisher and we want to be a publisher for other developers.

We just released Magnetic Sports Soccer (€2.39, developed by Revo Solutions) onto the Android Market, but the distribution channel isn't very good yet.

It's only available in a limited number of countries and there are too many free apps. Google needs to sort this out. It has enough money to make these mistakes though. One day it will learn and Android will be a good platform.

We're open minded in terms of the games we will release; everything apart from sexy games. From casual to hardcore. We don't want to be a publisher just addressing casual games.

For example, we are working on the sequel to our survival horror game Hysteria Project but we also release very casual games such as BaDaBoo, which has been downloaded 1.5 million times from the App Store.

It's had a conversion rate of between 8 - 10 percent so it's pretty good. And we're near 10 percent with My Brute, which is our biggest game to date. If you want to make IAP a success, you need to build a community first.

Well, My Brute isn't a pure freemium game as you have to buy it, but in the future it might be. From an in-app purchases point of view, we're adding new items and potions, which add new functionality for the player.

You can add graphics elements such as on Facebook games, but for IAP to work on iPhone, you need to add real gameplay value. For example, in My Brute, you can buy potions so you can have 100 fights per day with your character, which is otherwise limited.

Because this adds gameplay, the price isn't really important. In My Brute, we have an item priced at €9.99, and it's a huge success because it adds real value.

It's the new revolution. It's not a netbook. It's not a computer. But you might carry it around instead of these. And you don't have to wait for it to load up. It's like iPhone, but more powerful and with a bigger screen. And most importantly, I think it will encourage a new type of game, and that's why it's a real challenge for Nintendo and Sony.

I think the market will be there for quality products. We're launching our first games at between $3 and $5. It's certainly not a market for 99c games. That price really isn't good for game developers.