Preview: Festival of Games 2011

Well, the most important developments that we see - not just in Europe, but globally - is the fact that games really have broken free of the living room. They're not just on consoles or PCs - they've invaded the handheld, mobile phone, and you're seeing games showing up in all kinds of applications.

You see them in software, and even in consumer electronics, where games are ways for people to learn to understand their devices.

That's really tapped into a very big target group - whereas games 15 years ago were for a much smaller, hardcore group, now almost all young people today... but also a lot of older people play; even though they would never consider themselves a 'gamer,' even if they do play three hours per day on Bejewelled, or World of Goo, or anything else.

With the new distribution methods, and devices that are capable of playing more interesting games, a whole new target group has risen up - and the way that people play, and the places they play, has also changed. They play on the bus, on the plane, on the street - and we want to show what that means.

When you think about the games market there are so many segments that have developed in the last couple of years that even if you never develop a console title you can still be a leading business in the iPhone or web space. That's the main thinking behind the theme - everywhere you look you see some form of gaming, and that impacts on who your target group, your business model, your distribution method and so on. There are lots of new opportunities that developers and publishers can look into.

Currently we have four or five really good names, and names that are very relevant to the main theme. For example, we've announced that Tom DuBois from OnLive is coming to speak - they've really into the Games Anywhere idea with their platform, and the opportunity to play almost any game on almost any device. That's a very new way of thinking about your distribution, but also the way in which you target games to your audience.

Nicholas Francis will also be there - he's a co-founder of Unity, which has been one of the leading development platforms to provide cross-platform, something that gives companies some very interesting opportunities to think about what devices or outlets they want their players to use when playing the games.

We've also got the managing director of Endemol Games, Jurian van der Meer - with this Games Anywhere theme it's clear that games are no longer just the domain of the traditional publishers that have been around for years; you see many new media companies stepping into this area and thinking about how they can combine television or films with games. It opens up a whole new spectrum of game idea to develop; how can you integrate a television programme or film with games?

We've also got Scott Steinberg, who'll be talking about how the games industry is going to be turned upside down by all those players that go from traditional devices to the new platforms, like iPhone and Facebook - if you're looking at the question of what the gamers are going to be doing in the next few years, that will be interesting for you.

So it's quite an international line-up so far, and great that those speakers are coming to share their visions on Games Anywhere - plus of course we'll be announcing lots more in the coming months.here