NCsoft's Jeremy Gaffney

I think you're going to see two tracks. Smaller games which evolve more frequently, take more chances, and you're going to see the big market games which are the ones that cost tens of millions of dollars and that market's going to evolve more slowly because there's fewer of them and you're scared when you're spending $60 million, $90 million. There's even rumours of games which cost hundreds of millions of dollars...

Yeah, for instance. [Laughs]. Nobody wants to take a risk with $150 million, and so you're going to see a lot more conservatism but on the other hand very high quality bars. The big barrier to having lots and lots of really small games is you need to have lots of content. You talk about the games where they sold a bunch of boxes but then trailed off - making hundreds of hours of content is really, really hard. It's what driving up the costs of these games, it makes a higher barrier for the little guys to come in, and so getting creative around that is going to be something we see a lot of in our industry. Trying to have more content, more content like PvP where because you're playing against PvP the content doesn't matter so much as cycling in new strategies, new players to keep the game interesting. People are going to get all the more clever, I think, in trying to break out the mould of "we have to have a team of 100 people sit there and generate content solidly."

I'm not sure free-to-play is really the kiss of death, or even a resurrection method, because the games that moved over to it have made a bunch of money from it. There's been more interest from the big publishers in moving over to it early in the life cycle. You'll probably see more games from big publishers which launch with free-to-play from the outset. But because that perception exists, I think it also makes publishers leery to move over to it because they don't want the perception of "oh, hey, we're shifting over because there are fewer players now." Players in many ways demand it, you know. Anecdotally in our industry there are lot of games that have resurrected themselves by moving over to that model, players flocking in, lot more money to be made off it. In a lot of ways it's better for players because you get to opt-in only to as much as you want to. If a game's that important to you, you're probably willing to put that much more money into it - or want to even, because they experience more and more of the content.

An iPhone MMO is going to hit at some point, and once it does all the big boys who are so conservative with all their money are going to come in and play hard in that space.

Yeah. You're seeing market segmentation too among the players who are playing largely based on skill and those who don't but maybe they have time or maybe they have money. Those are all three axises players plot themselves along. It's a rare person who has skill and time and money.

I think we'll see a big hit in the tablet and iPhone space, I think we'll see a big hit in the console space. Things make that difficult; if you have a five-year development cycle, trying to hit a console is very hard, because the hardware may change in that time. So all of a sudden the console you're working on went away, or it's "hey let's sign up for the PlayStation 7 six years in advance", and who knows where the market is by the time you come out. Because of that it's very difficult to go to console.

It's similarly difficult in iPhone and tablets because generations of that come out faster than your development cycle. Having said that, you'll see the potential to get that especially in the smaller games. There are some pretty good games experimenting with that on iPhone and tablet - one of those is going to hit at some point, and once it does all the big boys who are so conservative with all their money are going to come in too and play hard in that space.