Revolution's Charles Cecil

Well, unlike other digital stores, they come under no pressure from publishers - so all they really care about is both products that are good for the iPhone and iPod Touch brand and then games that are actually good. Because what they don't want to do is feature games that are rubbish.

We were in a position where we could show the guys in the UK the games at a fairly early stage - they knew they were coming, and they certainly didn't promise any coverage at any point, but they had visibility the whole time. They liked what they saw, so it was featured.

At the moment it's very pure, because they don't come under great pressure - there's very little leverage that the bigger companies can put on them.

Yes - I know that, for example, the issue of piracy is something that came up recently. I was talking to someone at Apple and there's generally a sense that there's 95 per cent piracy is ludicrous. What's interesting is that Apple never responds publicly to that sort of thing.

If you have a jailbroken iPhone and you want to steal any game that comes out... that's not 95 per cent piracy at all, because 95 per cent of people won't even look at your game. There is piracy, of course, but it's very low. Most people who would buy your game, would not dare to jailbreak their device. I certainly wouldn't, because I know that at some point they'll put in a new OS, and I'll get busted.

So the fact that you have, in truth, such a low piracy level is hugely beneficial, and that's one of the reasons we can afford to then sell the game at a much lower price. I do feel quite passionately that the pro-piracy arguments - that games are too expensive - you either accept it or you don't. But when a game is selling for a couple of pounds, if you then steal it... that's not piracy, that's theft, because you're not even prepared to pay a couple of quid. Which is incredible.

I guess that's the real challenge to these people, who argue they try it before they buy it, or that games are too expensive. Well, we can let you play the game for free, so you can try it first - and then if you do want to buy it, it's going to cost you $5... Either you went out there to steal it in the first place, or actually now you have the model that works for you.

They're wonderful - we haven't produced our games for XBLA, because they're 640x480. On iPhone, DS and Wii that's perfect, but my sense is that if you're going to go to XBLA or PSN, you do need to go hi-res. You don't necessarily need to have an incredibly ambitious game, but you do need to go to hi-res.

It's a huge opportunity, and to be fair it's probably not so much that they don't know how to, it's more that they can't afford to - because what's happened is that these huge publishers have effectively put themselves in a position where they control distribution. That's the model, and on that basis it's worth putting an awful lot of money into marketing so that you can stifle the competition.

But the cost of that is a high overhead, lots of people, lots of money spent on advertising where appropriate - and at the other end, which is where we're operating, the rulebook is totally torn up. Completely. I can't see how the larger companies can afford it.

Ultimately, the amount of money we're making is great for us, but it's chicken-feed for them - it's barely break-even, and they're in a very difficult position. So it's not a criticism of them per se, I'm just really glad I'm not a big publisher with a high overhead, because it would be very difficult to see where to go next.