Gearbox's Randy Pitchford

It's entertainment - as gamers, we want great entertainment, and we're really happy to spend money on the interactive entertainment that we love. The DLC option is about a convenient way to offer value to gamers that want it, and it's neat for gamers because if I love something, I'm excited when DLC happens. I can click a button, and a few minutes later it's there - I didn't have to drive to the store, it's not very expensive. It's a nice incremental add-on to something I already understand and trust, and had a great time with.

So it's nice for gamers, but it's great for developers too - it's something we can explore, and take risks with. There are things we've done in our DLCs that aren't the kinds of things we'd risk in the core game - because you know you're offering it to the audience that's the most dedicated and loyal.

You also know that if we sell 400,000 units of the DLC we're really happy, as opposed to if we don't sell 2 million units of this game we're not going to make our money back - so the economics of the relationship between the creator and the customer change. It gives us the opportunity to explore and take some risks, and it gives the customer a really convenient opportunity to get more of what they love.

We're certainly doing it right now using DLC. I think there are some games and brands out there where we trust the game design and the game maker to treat us well with the loot - the things that motivate us forward, and the pay-off that we get when we overcome the challenges.

And then there are other space that we love spending time in - so we've learned that, wow, the place we've created in Borderlands... people are really enjoying that. We love it, but you're never sure until you test it in the wider market - but they like the space, they like the characters.

We're getting a lot of people begging us to do certain things, more things in that space, and that's a really good sign - so if you have a space that people want to spend time in, and a gameplay loop that's really fun and one you can trust, it creates an opportunity to extend things, whether that's a sequel, or some kind of ongoing, continuously expanding experience... those are new ideas mostly coming from the MMO space, but can apply to all kinds of games.

It's pretty exciting to think how that can transform some of the offerings we make in the future - and now we're in a world that whether you're on a PC or console, you're connected. The platforms all have storage... that's really cool - we have a lot of options that didn't exist earlier in this industry.