Q: Which format is your priority in Europe? You have these big Xbox 360 titles such as Mass Effect, but they don't see release on the PC until six months after the console release. Why don't you go for a simulataneous treatment on these titles?
Peter Zetterberg: On a global scale the Windows Vista business is as important as our Xbox 360 business. But in Germany for example, we want more gamers to buy our Xbox 360. If we launch a game that is on 360 and PC simultaneously, we basically shoot ourselves in the foot by allowing the German market to choose to play the PC version – because they are more likely to buy that than spend their money on the Xbox 360. On a global scale the PC is very relevant to us. And I would say that 90 per cent of the games that are pitched to us are on console. We're strongly perceived as a console publisher because we're the first-party publisher even though the Windows operating system is equally important to us. If we launched a Halo game on PC and 360 in Germany simultaneously, 80 per cent of sales would be on the PC. So we need to pick and choose our formats.
Q: So you're admitting that the Xbox 360 is the priority, because you don't want to lose console sales.
Peter Zetterberg: No, they're equally important. The PC has a much wider use, it's so established, it's so dominating already so in some territories we need to make the games for the 360 to increase the sales there.
Matthew White: It also depends on the game concept. A lot of games work on both platforms, but when you're working on a game from a creative point of view it helps to envisage people playing the game on one platform. When you're working on a game for multiple platforms that vision isn't quite the same. When you're working on a game you can imagine people playing solo or co-op in their living rooms, but it's a different picture when you imagine them playing on a PC. When I'm working on a game that's what I'm thinking about – the end result. How is a gamer going to be feeling playing through this experience? When we think about the games we want to make we have to bear in mind that end result because it's played in an end environment that we don't control.
Peter Zetterberg: And developers want to make games that they want to make, not necessarily games that they think will sell. It's a great, charming way of doing things and great games come out of that mindset. But then you can get developers picking what they think is the coolest platform to develop on. So maybe in their eyes the PC is not as exciting as getting a dev kit for the Xbox 360 and getting a licence from Microsoft. And that's why we see more titles pitched at more platforms rather than PC only.
Q: Would you like to receive more pitches for PC projects?
Matthew White: It's very much the taste of the developers. When they come and pitch to us, I'd be very surprised if a team that loves playing PC games had an idea for a console title. Making games is an emotional experience because you want to make games that make you feel the same as when you're playing the games you love. That's why developers are in the business. There's always a very strong connection between what developers are playing and what they want to make.
Q: Do you ever sit through a console pitch and try to convince the developer that it would make a better PC title, or vice-versa?
Peter Zetterberg: I've had an RTS game pitched to me on the 360. Every time this happens developers say, “right, this time we've solved the RTS problem on console.” It was an ambitious game from new developers with a smaller team. And we were one of the first that they had pitched to so they hadn't turned cynical yet. And as they pitch, clearly this is not a good idea to do it on the Xbox 360. But their argument was that they could potentially sell more on the console because it's more of a mass market machine than the PC. And it was a German developer so they had that very strong RTS heritage in the region. But we suggested that they came back with a PC pitch.
