Hi-Rez Studios' Todd Harris

I think that is possible, and yes we'd like to see that expand. It’s not quite as far along as obviously the PC, so we continue to look at the PC as our focus in the short term. But really regarding free-to-play, and even just as we were saying the ability to constantly update the game regardless of the business model, whether it’s subscription or DLC, I think a platform that lets the developer update the game frequently will continue to win out. The PC and the mobile platforms are very strong in that regard and we’d like to see the consoles move in that direction also.

That’s right, I think they’re having to evolve by necessity there. And there’s a hardware component but just as legitimate there’s just business model questions as well as certification questions that need to be worked out between developer entity, publisher entity and hardware platform provider.

Yeah we’re very excited about Tribes, we acquired it last October and certainly the things that attracted us are it’s known for being one of the original internet sports games, if you will. So having online multiplayer competitive play, team oriented play, that really distinguished it. The earliest versions of Tribes games had no campaigns whatsoever, so as a studio we enjoying making and playing online team based games and Tribes has that solidly, those credentials are established with the Tribes franchise. So that was certainly one element. There’s jet packs, we love jet packs and we’re inspired somewhat by the tribes jet packs at Global Agenda, so it’s great to be able to embrace those. We saw that the speed of the franchise, the speed and the vertical element, even though there’s a lot of first-person shooter games, there was nothing today that kind of matched the Tribes franchise as far as speed, embracing the vertical game space and combining twitch with teamwork. And so all those things just made it an attractive franchise and one that we thought deserved to be reintroduced to today’s gaming audience.

Yeah, we announced in the trailer PC and XBLA. I will say that our first initial focus is the PC as far as what we’re developing on, testing on, and as far as availability we’re focused first on the PC. One; because that’s where people associate the franchise, that was its home, and two; because we do want to be able to deliver updates for it, and as we were saying we think that’s the strongest platform for it right now.

We’re self publishing.

I think we’ve got some good partnerships, some already established. We’re having conversations, so I think our reputation with Global Agenda and having a fairly sizable built-in community plus the Tribes name is making it less of a challenge to get attention. Certainly being a studio with one successful shipped title and the Tribes name, we’re getting a lot more attention than when we were just starting out, when we were having to invent our own IP with Global Agenda that no one had heard about and we’d never made a game as a studio before, so there’s certainly a lot more visibility this time.

Until the console allows for faster, more frequent updates and alternate business models then it’s less of a sweet spot for us than PC.

I do think it’s realistic in this generation. I think as you mentioned Sony has already delivered an MMO with DC Universe Online, and now a free-to-play MMO and it feels like Microsoft will in the near future look at alternate models, there have been rumours of free-to-play on the Xbox - which I don’t know anything more about than you do - but it feels like there’s no reason that faster updates and specifically free-to-play models or alternate pricing models, those should be able to be developed on this generation consoles, and those things would be very interesting to us.

Well with our 50 we’re actually working on three unique projects. Global Agenda continues to have a team that updates it, Tribes, that has a team around it and we actually have recently announced Smite, which is in the DotA category, gods versus gods, that also has a team. So we deal with the challenge by having highly talented self empowered teams around each project, which is actually going well. I think being small is actually advantageous there compared to our experience with Global Agenda. Sometimes having less people involved lets decisions be made more quickly in the team and makes things run faster. So that's in our advantage and I think being built from the beginning around online distribution, to be honest, a lot of the bigger studios and bigger publishers are having to make a tremendous change to embrace these new models and new ways of thinking, rather than the fire and forget, get it to a retail store and the project is over. We’ve always thought the project begins when you get it out to consumers, and built a machinery around that. So we have our own challenges being small but I think a lot of advantages as far as culture and being nimble and responsive to what gamers want.