Playfish's Kristian Segerstrale

It's been very successful for us. Who Has the Biggest Brain? has been in the top three paid-for downloaded games in the UK, it's done very well also in other countries. 90 per cent of the people who have purchased the game have connected back to Facebook. It's been a successful game for us and early venture to make the iPhone platform more of a social gaming platform.

I think it is. But I think the broader question is whether the era of the home console might be drawing to a close. Because the challenge is, no matter how social you try to make a console not everybody has one. Not all your real world friends will have the same console as you do. No matter how social you make it you will only reach, if you like, vertically. You will only reach your friends who have an Xbox 360, or whatever console they have.

The power of social networks and games and services delivered through them or online is that you can literally reach everybody. The whole reason social gaming is so powerful is that the emotional reason why you play is no longer about you versus the monster or whatever is going on on your screen, it's about the fact that the outcome of the game matters to your real world friends. There is real social interaction, communication, collaboration and competition going on between people you care about in real life. That is simply not possible with home consoles. When they cost as much as they do today, not everyone will have one. Sure it is a step in the right direction but the broader question is will home consoles play a role in where the games industry is heading?

Our mission as a company is to change how the world plays games. We believe there is a humongous opportunity in getting people more engaged in games by getting them to play together. It's like ball games in the park and board games at home played throughout the ages, you're communicating and having fun with friends. We're trying to bring games back to that form of entertainment. It's not about you sitting at home with the lights off in front of your plasma TV killing monsters. It's a fun, social, casual, everyday activity with all your friends. Our mission is to transform how the world plays games. The PC might be where that starts, but our belief is that handheld devices connected to the internet where you can connect with your friends are important, and that's why we're excited about iPhone and Android for the future. I think that games consoles - while they might be an important part of the industry now - might become niche in the next couple of years because it's not at all clear if it even makes sense to deliver this type of gaming - social, with micro-transactions - on a home console.

We absolutely welcome them. In fact, they are already there with a number of games on Facebook. They clearly believe, much as we believe, that games are becoming services and that retail distribution for games will decline quite rapidly from here onwards. And I think that the most important thing for social games is to ensure the quality of the end user experience. The social game experience is growing and continues to grow and we've been at the forefront of that and have been very pleased with where the industry has gone so far and with how the consumers have embraced it. The only threat that I see to the industry is that in the search for early profit and maximising early results for companies, companies will act overly aggressively in how they try to monetise users, which is not good for anybody. A bit like, if you remember what happened to ringtone subscription services in Europe - where there was a bit of a consumer backlash because the way people were paying wasn't transparent. I think it's great to see companies like EA have a bigger presence in the market because I think they will help set the quality standard and ensure people get what they've paid for.

We announced our launch on the iPhone and Android. We also launched on other social networks such a iGoogle, Bebo, Yahoo and other places. We've been pretty busy, also continuing to work hard on Facebook and MySpace. Since then, Pet Society, our biggest game, has grown to 12 million monthly active users - which is more than World of Warcraft. We've grown tremendously over the past six months. Our most recent title Restaurant City reached more than 54 million players in the ten weeks after launch.