Frontier's David Braben

That's still the case, unfortunately.

There's a danger there... we saw a move about five years ago with a lot of developers going to mobile games. Most of those developers have now gone. Relying on any one segment of the market as a silver bullet to solve all problems is very dangerous.

What worries me, especially about the iPhone, is that while there have been some conspicuous successes, there have been a huge number of games that I've not even heard of, and I keep hearing of new ones that just didn't sell at all because people didn't see them.

So with these mechanisms, they might look great on paper - "Wow, we've got a market of 20 million people, or 100 million people!" - but actually you're getting an ever-smaller percentage that they appeal to. It's the same with mobile phone games.

I think it's that fragmentation, and the reliance on any one sector... you're betting the farm on one thing that's not proven yet.

Absolutely. I'd like us to see an egg in each basket, and that's the point - in the same way I got labelled for space games, and then kids' games, but hopefully people will see we've actually done quite a broad range of games, a repertoire, and are still doing so. In fact, broader than ever.

And so I think that is positive, and I'd recommend to other people to try to have a mix of risks - high, medium and perhaps lower risk. Publishers try to do the same, it's what is often called the portfolio.

With that, and with the changes in the industry - working with and alongside publishers - there's a lot of positive there. Yes, things are changing, but it's away of grabbing opportunities.

Well, some things never change. In a sense, it is still the case, because the trouble is, however good your iPhone game is, it needs to hit critical mass to be seen. People need to talk about it.

I think the difference between iPhone and where it's more conspicuous that you need a relationship, is how do you get your game... although there has been the odd success, the majority don't get very many sales at all, and that's the trouble.

The dream is being oversold - like it was for mobile - and most people don't make any money out of it at all. I heard this applies to PC as well, somebody said they'd made GBP 100,000 and it was fantastic. You start thinking: "Wow, that's lottery money!"

But actually, that's four people working for two years, what salaries would they have received over the same period? You start to realise that actually you need to make a lot of money to compete with a real salary.

No, I'm not saying it's not possible... in the same way I'm not saying it's not possible to win the lottery. I'm saying it's hard.

Exactly. People don't see the thousands standing there with a lottery ticket who didn't win this time...

That's a funny thing, the "What's going to happen?" question, because it's a continuously changing thing. There's no one moment when things happen. We did an experiment a few years ago releasing a mobile phone game, and we supported 35 platforms - and we still only hit a small percentage of the market.

It is hard, that's the trouble. Look at film and TV, just to give an idea, because that was more visibility. Try and comparing some YouTube clips that people have made against a blockbuster film - that's how people are seeing it... they're taking numbers from a blockbuster film but seeing that the effort they can expend is closer to the YouTube clip.

I think with seeing some of the very cheap games through iTunes, some of them will succeed, but it's a small percentage.

Well, we're not making any announcements yet, but you'll see something from Frontier this year.