Learning To Fly

Well, yeah, definitely we see that general phenomenon of children ageing out of the target demographic, transitioning to the Worlds of Warcrafts and things. So that is a continual challenge of targeting a younger demographic, because they age into it and age out of it, so you have to continually work hard to engage with new audiences.

But the interesting thing is that we do see a lot of kids keep coming back. Club Penguin is unique in that it is has a whole programme of events throughout the year - at the moment we've got a live Halloween party, which is the most popular [in-game] party of the year. We completely reskin the whole world, there are whole new experiences, lots of new games and things to play. Kids really get hooked into and will come back who we haven't seen for quite some time.

The thing that few people get is what a social experience it is for kids versus what a social experience is for adults. The social experience for kids is play; you go round to a friend's to have a coffee and look at holiday photos, maybe, but kids go round to their friends' to play. It's really about that experience part - yes, there are new costumes and things like that too, but a key thing is that it's a world where kids' imaginations really take over.

We had a winter party, and to an adult just coming in cold it was a very straightforward environment, but you see what the children were talking about and they're imagining avalanches, wolves, the forest chasing them... None of this was actually there, but if you leave enough space in the environment their imagination actually goes wild.

I think children are very comfortable with the look and feel that they're got there. We're seeing a cartoon-like animation but they're [gestures to sports scene on-screen] seeing a whole audience in the stadium, hearing applause, it's like Wembley for them. We're very intent on keeping that alive.

Certainly we wouldn't go into any environment which was not appropriate for under 13s, so there's no intent to put it into that situation. As other platforms are becoming more popular, we're definitely looking at taking this into those platforms. We had a couple of titles on the Wii and the DS that have been incredibly popular in the past, and then two months ago we launched PuffleLauncher on the iOS, which is based on a game that's incredibly popular in the world.

We've taken that out and onto the iOS platform, completely rebuilt it, made it much more for that platform experience, but linked it back - so you can register your Penguin, and as you collect the coins in the game they feed back into your account within the virtual world. Similarly so for the DS and the Wii. I certainly see that connectivity getting more cohesive.

Both, to be honest. They're definitely built as a business, as a premium product, but they are allowing people to stay engaged with Club Penguin when they're out and about or on a different device. And yeah, it went to number one across most of the markets in Europe. And you'll see more of that, in terms of mobile, from Club Penguin next year.

We continue to be focused across the whole range of games, so we have a console side as well as the more digital side that I focus on, and both sides are performing well and continuing to show growth. There's a pretty even split at the moment in terms of how they're performing. Obviously we've got Marvel, which is a great franchise for the gaming world.