Disney's Stephen Wadsworth

If you'd have asked me this question five years ago, I'd have said that there a lot of parents that have a lot of work to do. I think that's changed pretty dramatically just through education - there's a lot of education that we get behind. There are a lot of public service announcements around this stuff for parents in the US and elsewhere, and we get behind that in a significant way.

So I think it's changed - I think parents are more aware, and more vigilant in helping their kid make good choices. Certainly for us, the focus of our products is things that are appropriate for a broad family target - our products do tend to be viewed as safe and appropriate because they are - and that's our legacy, but I think there's broad education across the spectrum that's important, and is having a nice impact.

The other thing I like more and more about it is that they're becoming more of a social experience for the kids - so it's not kids just locking themselves into a room and playing something against the computer. They're engaging with friends, and in a lot of cases their parents. We have a substantial number of mums who play Toontown Online, it's kind of surprising.

So they know what the experience is like, and it gives them a better education to help manage it for their kids. It's an ongoing societal opportunity - it's smarter and better, and it's happening, and we try to contribute to it.

We like the idea that our products are very safe, very much appropriate for these kids, and therefore the parents are comfortable. I think that's a differentiator, and we take that responsibility very seriously.

I think one of the opportunities we, and others, have is to integrate more learning elements into these things as well. There's a reasonable amount of it - in some of our products there's clearly some processing that has to go on for a kid to figure things out. They get a lot of insight from just being on our websites or being in our games - and I think that's good, but I think we can do more there, and continue to look for ways to do more.

Club Penguin has a 'type-the-story' element, so you're sitting there as the story comes up and you're trying to type with it. It teaches a kid how to type. And they can pick the story too. That's a perfect example, and we'll be doing more and more of that over time.

Well, I'll say this - our commitment is pretty significant, and our perspective is very much a long term one. For the Walt Disney Company we need to be pretty sizeable to have a move-the-needle impact, and we wouldn't be doing this unless we wanted to move the needle.

So the view on this is long term - and frankly the investments we're making... in the scheme of things to the whole company they're meaningful but they're not like building a new theme park. Yet the opportunity here is huge.

Now that said, we're not going to go crazy - we'll be very smart, very selective about what we decide to invest in as an internally-developed, internally-published videogame title, or as an online virtual world experience, or whatever - because we want to make sure that what we do is a winner and really works, and ideally contributes to the broad strategy of the company, maybe around a franchise base, perhaps.

So I think we're on a very good track - the expectation is high, for sure - and we'll do whatever we need to do to build a significant business here.