The Digital Pipeline

And Steam is giving core and casual gamers alike - probably more core - a very good, very convenient technological solution, and demonstrating how much pleasure there can be when it comes to buying things digitally. The immediacy, the snacking, the pricing - and not having to trek down to the shops... a lot of people don't want to do that.

In terms of the people that have come on recently, we've got Codemasters and Ubisoft, and should have some other big players on soon. SEGA's been on there for some time. There are about 150 games on the site now, give or take.

I think we have to ensure that we're doing the best by our partners, ourselves and our consumers. If we've simply got a system that puts you on the front page when you're new, but two days later you go to the back, and something else new goes in its place, that's not really going to work for everybody.

What we'll be doing with our partners, who own the IPs, is to work out a strategy of promoting - and not just through price - via genre, developer, or customer profile a certain type of game. A retrospective now and again doesn't do any harm - that might be price- or cluster-driven.

We've got a number of developer focuses lined up - an Indie Developer Arcade, which is a place for Indies to put their products where they're not going to be overshadowed by mainstream products. As a consumer you can just go in there and have a look around, and that's distinctly different from the heavyweight products.

We'll be linking those through, looking at rising stars - what could be today's indie might be tomorrow's Valve, or something like that. But we'll be engaging the customers in an editorial way, and that's where the links with Eurogamer can really start to come through.