Frank Gibeau

It's actually gone very well. It's gone, frankly, better than Dead Space went. I think Dante's Inferno has a much tighter position and consumer proposition than when we started with Dead Space.

I think when you look at Dante's Inferno you start with something that everybody has some knowledge of, which is Hell, and the idea that you go into Hell as a hero and fight demons... that's something that resonates with a lot of people.

So we found early on that the game, tied to the poem, had an interesting angle to it that allowed us to really step into the concept of going to Hell and fighting. What we've found so far - among them anger, lust, treachery, gluttony - everyone can relate to those things.

That makes it much easier to get the game built, but also the demand going. When you have a new IP, having that clear idea, a position statement, is what makes it a hit early on. So far what's worked for us on Dante's was being very focused on a clear character - Dante - and building out that character very early on, giving him clear characterisations like the scythe, the cross. He has clear gameplay moments, with having to absolve or punish... and then it's creating the world.

Everybody knows about the River Styx, the nine circles - it's just one of those things where people... vampires, zombies, Hell - there are certain perennial things that people gravitate to for great story-telling back-drops, and in Dante's that's been easily the thing that's worked.

The team is also very focused - it's a high quality team, with individuals that have a lot of experience in the action category. With that M-rated third-person action genre where Dead Space and Dante's resides - we also have other IPs that we're working on inside that category - it can be a very exciting category for the industry.

It's a great question - there are probably a couple of things I'd add to the context around Q3. There was a severe economic downturn, which caused a flight to quality... not just that but also frankly a flight to things you already knew. So Need For Speed, FIFA, Call of Duty, Madden - you had a good sense of what you were going to get.

If you look at the charts it wasn't just us, it was everybody - there was a complete polarisation of the market place. It was very brutal in the UK, with Woolworths and the other accounts going down - there was an incredible flight to known quality there, and in the US the same thing. So that made it harder.

The other two issues I believe: We didn't start early enough on our marketing. You have to build a fan base, you have to build it early and in a credible way, which means you've got to get your assets, your concept and demos out very early on - much earlier than you would with a sports of driving game. So we started our marketing two quarters earlier this year.

The second thing is that you've got to find the right windows. You can't just launch in the middle of November on top of everything else, so we brought in Brutal in October - it feels like we found a nice clean launch window there. We originally looked at putting Dante's out at Christmas, but it just didn't feel right in terms of the products that are coming, so we found a nice window in February where we think we can really stand out. It also gives the team a lot more polish time, and we want to make sure the team has that last three months to really make the game perfect.

So a combination of those three issues is giving me a sense that we're going to be much stronger this year, and in addition to that we've also looked at how much money we need to spend up front, at launch, how we sustain it, and then online.