The Doctors Will See You Now

Somewhat. It depends on the property. I think there's a danger if you try and do it all at once. When we do do it, you don't do it all in parallel, you essentially do it in a sequence. You may be exploring things is one platform, you may be actually making the bulk of it on another platform.

You have to deliver features that the players want on whatever platform. It's definitely not do it because you can do it, it's do it because it has to be great. Your social game needs to be great, your mobile game needs to be great, your console game or PC, they all have to be great in their own way relative to the competitive landscape. If you think of it very thoughtfully and you're listening to your fans the whole way and you're accommodating what they're looking for, and also surprising and delighting them with new innovations that are unexpected then that's the magical mixture.

You have to take risks in order to survive in an industry that's as dynamic as videogames, it's fusion of art and entertainment and technology, and if you aren't taking risks, like Greg said, then you won't survive. It's a really interesting blend of taking careful calculated risks, and making sure you're listening to market research and your fans and following your team's intuition the whole way, at all times taking smart risks, and being flexible and dynamic. And recognising there's so much dynamic change and entertainment preferences change all the time.

Business models are changing now pretty rapidly and radically too, if you approach it as this is really exciting, and just get ready for the ride and you're dynamic and flexible in how you approach it it can work really well, if you approach it from more of a "we've got infrastructure and things we can't let go of" that doesn't work as well.

Luckily Bioware and EA are changing really rapidly to accommodate the new industry. I mean look at The Sims Social, on track to be the number one social game. Who would've have predicted that a few years ago, that EA, a traditional publisher, would do that?

Or six months ago! The signs were there but we hadn't done it yet.

I think internally they knew because John Riccitiello has been talking about this transformation for years, ever since we joined EA, he's the reason we joined EA originally, because we worked with him at Bioware/Pandemic. He's an inspirational guy. He's been talking about this culture transformation and others like Frank Gibeau in EA have been really passionate about this new digital IP universe and transforming in to new business models. And currently its been going on for a long time, so now it's really exciting for us to see that hitting the market, and consumers getting excited and play all these new games. And the best is yet to come, there's a lot of stuff they haven't seen yet, from Bioware and EA too.

Going back one moment to how to use properties properly, I think one thing we can all see is when somebody just milks something to death. I think that's were the really big danger is, especially with publishers that don't have depth of slate. That's the other big thing that's exciting for us, we've still got Jade Empire, we could pull that up sometime, you never know right? And also the other thing, honestly, if we wanted to make something new maybe one of our existing properties takes a holiday. As crazy as that sounds, but there's a benefit to actually giving fans a break, but then the thing with the other platform concept is that it could just take a console break, but it could go really aggressively on another platform.

There's the whole back catalogue too. I mean EA has a tremendous back catalogue of IPs and we have a mix of all kind of new things. We have some new IPs, we have Bioware created IPs that are now in their third and fourth iteration, we have IPs were we've partnered with great licenses like Star Wars, or Warhammer's Wrath Of Heroes, so there's a nice blend of different things.

It gives us flexibility. You don't feel the pressure like "we've got to pump another one out." I think other competitors are in that mode, you look at their slate and you look at their depth and you're like, wow, if this doesn't work for the fourteenth time, there could be trouble.

We have seven locations across the world. Edmonton, Montreal, Austin, Virginia, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Ireland.

Agility is a state of mind though, it doesn't matter how big you are, you have to have the philosophy for it.

And focus too. Each of those locations has a unique focus, and the capability of the business units within our label and EA is structured that same way, that people are empowered and their capabilities are aligned with delivering really high quality content, different business models, different genres, different platforms, and they empower the people and really deliver against discreet goals.

And you can't be afraid of throwing some of your old stuff away. Being willing to jump forward into a new space and realise - well, I have to leave something behind. It's a state of mind, to actually try new things and not be afraid to take that next step.

We'll have our own pad at that point, like everyone else. The Bio Pad. All our games are going to be on the Bio Pad! [Laughs]

We've never had an end point, it's more about direction to create, deliver and evolve the most emotionally engaging games in the world, really high quality, no matter what platform they're on, trying to surprise and delight our fans.

And a pad.

I have a no comment on the pad.