Best of 08: Thierry Braille

Fabulous, I think the things we were discussing twelve months ago have happened, and as far as we're concerned basically the results have been absolutely fabulous - we're happy.

It's great news, but I think we're also a player in the evolution and expansion of the market, with new demographics - the products that we've released are contributing to the new videogame market.

I think Turok was seen by all the industry players as a successful resurrection of an old and cherished brand in the industry. People who have been in the industry for a while, and played the games when they were younger, will have a point of view on the old Turok - but I don't think we disappointed these people, on the contrary. It's a good first step.

Well, I think we have a very strong Christmas line-up to begin with - probably the strongest ever, with a lot of family titles, but also some products that are aimed at a more specific demographic. Tinkerbell, for example, is more for girls, and Spectrobes which is probably more for boys. But altogether we have a strong family focus.

Well I think there is a number that we're quoting from time to time, which is that the growth we're projecting for our development investments. This year we're spending USD 180 million on development, and we think that in 4 or 5 years from now that should be about USD 350 million.

So it gives you an idea of the growth path we have in mind. Now if you take this growth path into account, and look at the way to spend money on product development, you could assume that there will be a mix of money spent on internal and external development.

If we spend more than twice the amount of money, it's fair to assume we cannot exclude a studio acquisition - it's definitely a fair assumption.

Well, I can't speak for the others, but for this company it's definitely a part of the strategy. When our key executives meet the analysts, journalists and so on, they systematically mention the videogame investment, results, creations - and I think there's a very strong commitment from the company behind this activity.

That product development number that I mentioned is a very clear illustration of that commitment.

I think it's a mix of things - I think that first of all the company to begin with very much has a culture of creativity embedded from day one. This is in the genetic code of any Disney division - there's so much respect for the creative people within Disney, they are the stars. It's truly something which is there already.

Then I think it's when we look at bringing external competencies, like for instance development studios, I think we're really looking at people and teams who are sharing these visions.

When you make a game at Disney Interactive you are pushing yourself as much as possible because you know that you're talking to guys who are doing movies, and who are benchmarks, role models. It's like a sort of emulation, people are pushing themselves.

So there is a lot of cross-fertilisation between the various divisions, so you see a lot of bridges between movies, TV and games, and we are talking to the other divisions, the creative communities are talking to each other, they share ideas and so on.

Yes, the culture is actually very good - it's very strong, and people are very proud.

I think it's very recent, to begin with - the idea is to have two divisions working in parallel. One is Disney Interactive Studios (DIS) - that's us, the videogames company - and the other is Disney Online (DOL).

From that standpoint there's no change on the day-to-day operational side, but I think there's a lot of potential for synergy across the divisions - product, marketing, you name it. So we're exploring all that at the moment.

Well I think to begin with we never had a frustration that Europe was perceived as second class. I think we have a very mature global organisation within DIS, and we're global for a good reason. We have a team in the US with a lot of international experience, so I think for them it's easy to deal with Europe at the same level as the US - we are peers.

But I totally understand what you're saying, because I hear that the size of the market... we could potentially become bigger than America in the coming years, especially if you factor in the growth of the Russian market.

I think it's a lot of countries, you could name the Middle East as well, which isn't strictly Europe, and Turkey as well. You could take the countries with the biggest populations and find out that some are still late when it comes to videogames, but if you look at the growth of those countries - it's spectacular.

You can imagine that those very populated countries will see very strong household penetrations 3 or 4 years from now. And when that's the case, imagine the size of the opportunity. Poland is a very well-populated country as well. Add all that and you can have hundreds of millions of people.

Yes - you have a lot of very interesting tools now to manage assets. One of the issues before when you had localised assets was managing the versions, correcting bugs, and so on. It's very complex.

It's also more integrated in the minds of developers now, particularly US-based developers, who in the past weren't always very prepared to deal with ten languages.

Yes, because we have always been very sensitive to localisations. We've been the first company to localise some products in Russia, last year on some formats. Often we're the first company to offer a format in a new country, so we're on the forefront.

Well it depends on the content we produce. To begin with we're platform-agnostic, so it's not like we prefer one or the other. But then you're right - it's a question of analysing the potential, the demographics, the affinity, the gameplay, the story we want to tell... there are so many areas, every decision is a unique one.

It's not like we say we need to have a certain number of SKUs on a certain format.

Definitely, there are discussions every time we have a new IP, or franchise, or story created by DIS, there's a debate with the other divisions - there are some good examples that will become apparent I think.

It's something that there's a lot of interest in. Watch this space.