Peter Molyneux - Part Two

Well, yes it is - I don't think Christmas is going to go away any time soon, though. I've got two views, and they're kind of polar opposites.

One view is that we've been doing this long enough as an industry, we should be able to get our release dates right by now, surely? The other view is that making any sort of game is an incredibly tough thing to do, and I think you can lay all the production schedules out you like, but if you sit down and actually play the game and realise the game's not an experience that's going to sell millions and millions, that's a very good reason to push things out... and a cost-effective thing to do.

So at the end of the day I think games will continue to move, and we should strive not to do that because it's extremely upsetting - and financially huge. Christmas is this insane focus where an enormous percentage of our market is there.

I think there are other opportunities in the year - Easter, and the summer holidays - but I just cannot see six or seven huge titles coming together at an arbitrary time any other time. It's not only Christmas you see, it's Christmas and Thanksgiving, it's a real double whammy which America drives us all through.

But as a gamer, it's nice to have a really big game come out every single month of the year, because you can be entertained all year round. There is this fallow period over the summer months where nothing really big comes out.

There's logic in your argument.

The reason that it's very hard to comment is that it's not just publisher, or retailers, or consumers - it's a sort of triad of those three.

I think it's very difficult. These products create what we call craters - the bigger the product the bigger the crater, and the larger you want the distance to be away from it.

I'd say that it's very easy to focus on one thing at a time - it's harder to focus on three things at a time. If you're inside the blast radius of something like Halo or Gears of War, or even Fable, you have to have a very strong, clear message of why a consumer should spend this much more on your product.

If you haven't got that you should stay clear of the blast radius - it's really that simple. Quite often, products are released because they've been finished, which in my view is the wrong reason. They get shipped six weeks after the gold disc is made, but that doesn't make it right to do it that way.

So in summary, if you want to go inside someone else's crater, just make sure you have a very clear message of why you stand out against it, because you're going to be competing for the front covers of magazines, front pages of websites, and the huge end caps at the end of stores. That's going to make a difference.

Of course, things are changing, aren't they? I think you can feel it as a change in the wind, but I'll leave that with you as a mystery.

Well I'm always one for the superlatives, but let's lay down the things that are exciting: Natal from Microsoft is pretty exciting; I think there's a lot more talk about digital download and games on demand; there's a lot more talk about episodic content; connecting people together on Live; new genres.

Add all those things together, and if you simply look at the last ten years and how many other years would have such a long list... I think you'd struggle. It is a pretty exciting time, and with that come enormous opportunities, but enormous risk as well.