After all the drama that surrounded Ubisoft Montreal's filing of an injunction to prevent some of its key Splinter Cell staff from taking new jobs over at Electronic Arts a couple of months ago, the company is now trying to to become the second biggest third-party publisher after EA by 2012.

Speaking in a recent Q&A session after a press tour of the studio, Ubisoft Montreal boss Yannis Mallet said, "Our strategy objective is to be the number two publisher within five years." He added that Ubisoft has a "reputation for quality and this Ubisoft seal of innovation and quality is the key, definitely, to accessing consumers."

Mallet also said that Ubisoft Montreal has a reputation for putting "creativity and innovation at the heart of our creations - making good quality games which surprise the market and consumers."

Regarding the whole EA issue - which Mallet refers to as "differences" instead of "problems" (semantics really is such a great thing, eh?) - Mallet had this to say: "EA is a competitor and business is business, so sometimes we have competitors' relationships. I know Alain [Tascan, head of EA Montreal], he's someone I know and I respect, and we are now competitors as with A2M and as with Activision, and our relationships are as fine as they could be."

Ubisoft Montreal is currently working on Assassin's Creed for the PS3 and Xbox 360 consoles and Rainbow Six: Vegas.