Southpeak's 7Sixty

I actually was not part of Southpeak originally - I was recruited for some special projects and this became one of them. I came from Vivendi Universal Games and before that Knowledge Adventure and Sierra. So, it's a long pedigree. And eventful. Mostly eventful. [Laughs].

I've been in the industry for 18 years. I started off with Capcom, and at that point I moved over to Sony right when they were launching the first PlayStation. I played different roles at Sony, but I was there for about 12 years and then I joined a sales rep organisation that worked with various publishers - Southpeak being one of them at the time, along with a number of other ones. So that's where I had an association with Southpeak as a sales rep, but as they started to get 7sixty rolling, I was pretty much recruited to come over and work on it.

They seemed to be quite on-board with it. Most of the partners that we're talking to are very, very excited about the focus, which is what we're able to offer through 7sixty - that being on building franchises and not just coming in for opportunity plays. So most developers are really excited about the potential of developing franchises across multiple platforms again, which is starting to emerge as a real possibility and opportunity. So far everyone that we've spoken to has been very, very positive about it, including Firefly.

I think one benefit that Firefly and other developers that we're speaking with have is that they recognise that there is an infrastructure growth that will be dedicated to the digital side of the business, which actually just benefits them. There will be more resources, in the analytics side, in the marketing, so they not only welcome it but they really applauded it because they see that it's just going to benefit their success with their products.

I think that's changing a lot too, that thought that it's less spectacular. Certainly, if you're participating on PSN or XBLA the games, the demand that's coming up on them, is just increasing over time. That's true also on all of the mobile platforms as well. It's becoming very competitive, and that's why having a label that focuses on this, that helps independent developers really become more aggressive and more competitive in this pretty rapidly growing space is really important. So we're stressing quality, and that's one of the big things that we're communicating to all of our publishers and hopefully to the consumers as well as we branch out and talk to them.

I think the one thing really is there are some very, very talented developers out there and yes, they could absolutely self-publish. But there are so many things that go into creating a franchise or a line-look. Look, we're all gamers, we love getting games, and we want these developers to focus on getting these great games. There are some very time-consuming things in launching a game successfully. You've got to through all the press releases, you've got to do the QA steps, you've got to localise properly - a lot of things that take them away from things that they love doing, and their passion which is development. For all the people who don't want to go through these steps, that's where 7sixty is able to leverage those aspects of the business. I think that there is a place for someone like 7sixty to work with these independent developers and really help them maximise their games by handling a lot of these things that really would take time away from them doing what they love.

It depends on how we work with the developer. If we're taking games from them and they are not coming from any kind of internal idea that we're promoting, that we want them to have a commitment to be able to participate in the success of the game when it comes. So we're looking at royalty share on that. Obviously if the idea comes from us, it's a different play. XBLA is a good comparison model. One thing that 7sixty also brings to the table is that it's one thing to be an independent developer and go out on your own, but it's very hard. What we're hoping to do at 7sixty is create a really strong portfolio where people are trusting that label and we have access to consumers who are really aware of the label and we can really cross-promote within it. So to a certain extent there's strength in numbers there. It's hard to be a lone developer right now with the crush of games coming out.

We are actually working with all the key sites on Stronghold - obviously Steam being one of them, Direct2Drive also, Gamersgate… There are a number of them and we're working with them all on Stronghold 3. We'll work with them on future products too. It's really a great relationship. They do service a key part of the market and it's a model that's worked for us and we see it working for us in the future.

You're right, but we're not the first one that's doing it. It's one of those things that I think the other sites have accepted and it's a good partnership and I guess there's really not a whole lot else to say about it. It's a model that's working right now and I believe everyone's happy about what we're doing on Stronghold 3.