Easy Company

We're actually already commercialising the beta! We're already selling stuff and we're seeing the clothing items do really well. The key moment in our games, both Battlefield: Play4Free and Heroes, is the kill cam. As you know, you get killed by someone and you see them straight afterwards. That's the moment when you can say - "I killed you and I am a badass."

There's another element too, which is the forums. People love to show off their soldiers there - taking screenshots and making a signature.

Not quite - Heroes had ten slots, I think we'll have five. That's the concession we've made. We're focusing a bit more on the weapons than we are on clothing, but we're still covering both.

Yeah, Battlefield: Play4Free wouldn't be possible without Heroes. We're using, to a certain degree, the same game engine, the same monetisation model, the same back end. The same RPG-type customisation and progression tree. So it's really... You could almost call it a sequel to Heroes, even though it's a very different feel. It really wouldn't have been possible without it.

We really know how to make that sort of game now. That sort of knowledge is enabling us to move onto this title and help the Need For Speed World Online team. We're really the first team to have a success in this space. There's so much that you learn behind the scenes, behind the gameplay that you're adding to these new titles.

We see a huge amount of that. At the time, our best ever month was the launch of Battlefield: Bad Company 2. You'd expect people to leave the free-to-play games and go over to the triple-A games when they launch, but they don't. The Battlefield franchise is in people minds and it just multiplies interest in the entire franchise.

I don't know if it's the hardcore players playing Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and then playing Heroes or if it's the little brother of the guy playing Battlefield: Bad Company 2 who wants to play Heroes. We expect the launch month of Battlefield 3 to be a huge month in Battlefield: Play4Free as well, just because we'll be piggybacking on their marketing. It's very interesting - no cannibalisation whatsoever.

Let me try and work it out.

Just over five per cent of the budget of Battlefield 3. That's production and marketing. Five to ten per cent.

Yeah - we're working on real, concrete connections between the games as well, which we can't talk about yet.

Basically, if you want to be a great Battlefield 3 player, then you should be playing Battlefield: Play4Free.

Chris Andserson, who's the editor of Wired, wrote a book called Free a couple of years ago, where he argues that, if something is online, the price-point will inevitably drop to free.

He uses Wikipedia as a great example. Encyclopaedias used to cost thousands of dollars, now they're free, because they're online. That's a possible future. Whether that takes three years or twenty, I don't know - but I think we're going to see price points dropping and dropping.