Activision Blizzard's Bob Loya

Absolutely - even if it's something that we might not pick up, it's always great to see what developers are up to from a creative perspective. With all of the new platforms out there, whether it's Facebook or iPhone, all of the mobile and social gaming, people are doing some really cool stuff - and they don't require $20 million budgets to do it.

So you can get a group of three of four people and put together a demo or prototype - or even a game in some cases - that's just excellent, old-school gaming and back to core gamin mechanics. It's really exciting in a lot of ways, how developers are much freer with their creativity now than they were two or three years ago.

I would agree completely - iteration is key in getting games to a vertical slice; that's key in our evaluations for big, triple-A projects. But now, with these new technologies and platforms, developers are able to get games up-and-running more quickly - and they've able to communicate what the fun factor is much more effectively than in the past.

It is really exciting, and we're seeing lots of really cool and unique stuff. Technology I think is leading the way right now, and I think creativity will catch up with it pretty soon in terms of things like Kinect, 3D gaming and so on. It is a very exciting time.

One of the biggest challenges we face right now is that, while several years ago there was just the 360, PS3, Wii, Xbox, PS2 and the DS, now we just have so many different platforms and pieces of interactive entertainment that are vying for consumers' time.

It's much harder now, because we're competing on so many platforms, so many mechanisms for getting content to gamers - and as exciting as it is, it's extremely challenging to get your consumer and keep them. They have so many more options now.

Well, we're big fans of all the platforms, and we want them all to sell well. First and foremost the software that's coming out at launch needs to be great, and we're really hoping that the public embraces each of the platforms.

For me personally, I'm really excited about Kinect. I know that Microsoft is gearing up another round of games that's probably going to be focused more on the core gamer - that's extremely exciting for me, to see what they're able to come up with, and see what the technology is able to do for those core audiences, as opposed to the casual audiences which it already does a great job for.