There's been plenty of talk about mobile MMOGS over recent months – what with all the speculation about
a possible mobile World of Warcraft and
Nokia revealing it is prototyping ideas – but French online publisher Ankama has got straight down to work and has announced a mobile version of its cartoon online role-playing game
DOFUS.
Called
DOFUSPocket, it won't be a cut-down version of the PC game (which boasts seven million players) but instead offer new content and additional features that will link into the main game.
"We do not wish to simply make a shorter version of
DOFUS for mobiles," says Emmanuel Darras, Ankama's CEO. "It seems to be the logical follow-up to our development which is centered on innovating cross-media solutions as well as our will to have a total control over our projects."
These features will include what Ankama calls 'simple information consultant' (checking on stats, we assume), 'user-to-user' applications (possibly simple trading or combat with other
DOFUSPocket gamers) and the ability to receive SMS alerts from within the main game.
"We already have several ideas about the content we want to add and how we will distribute it," said Mr Bahon, Ankama's games product director. "We also wish to make use of the latest mobiles' potential to the full including the diffusion of videos produced by Ankama Animations, or even the use of 2D barcodes."
Beta tests have already started and will be gradually opened up to all users with the official release of
DOFUSPocket due in June 2008.
