Creative Lead

"The next phase, for us, is to have two teams that are totally separate," says Heaton. "That's pretty exciting - it's also nice to be the only internally-owned Sega studio in the West that's doing a console game. Sega have had good and bad experiences with their external developers, and I think they're at a time when they want to double down on their key franchises - Sonic, Total War, and so on. So it's great to see them investing in console work here."

"I know for a fact that they want to invest in a team and tech that they can take to the next generation as well," he continues. "Our aim is certainly to spend time getting the right team together and then, while this game will be for this generation - almost certainly 360 and PS3, unless we have some surprises along the way - to move them on to the next generation."

What exactly the game will be remains a major secret at this stage, with Heaton refusing to be drawn even on whether it's existing or original IP. He's clearly excited, however, by the scale of the project, describing Sega's investment as being substantial, both in terms of time and money.

"They've looked at this studio and decided that it's where they need to invest," he says. "They want quality, and they've been working with some external parties who couldn't deliver that - whereas Total War is a fantastic example of that kind of quality."

"You know, quality is talked about as if it's either a sheen that you put on at some point, or some kind of magic dust that just happens because you say it enough... Actually, it's just bloody hard work, and it's about looking at every new job application you get and asking whether this person can add quality to the team - not if he's fast, or if he's just competent, but if he does quality work. Because of that, Sega are happy to put huge amounts of investment into us - because at the end of the day, a 90 per cent Metacritic rating is what's going to make the difference to Sega's bottom line."

With the new console project presently at the prototyping stage - which will last through until early next year - the company is now busy recruiting to bring the team up to size. "We're at 137 people at the moment," Heaton says, "and still growing. We've moved premises pretty recently, and we've got space in this building to grow - we could reach 200. We're doing a few bits of recruitment for Total War, as needs must, but it's mostly for the console team - that's across the board, in art, programming, design, the whole lot."

Recruitment, however, is proving a challenge - a challenge which Heaton believes is faced by all game developers in the UK, to some degree. "It's tough," he acknowledges. "It's always tough to get the best people. We're recruiting worldwide - we're spending huge amounts of time on visas and whatever, to get people over here. Out of the last ten candidates that we've either brought in or made offers to, half of them are from outside the UK."