THQ's Danny Bilson

Yes - we've been doing it for about two years. It'll be more well-known as these releases start to come out, starting in calendar Q1 when some of the games that have been green-lit since I got here and the new team start to roll out - beginning with Home Front, then Red Faction, Space Marine and ultimately Saints Row. You're going to see a quality level.

The other thing is a series of announcements that you're hearing from us, where we really realise that great games are made by great game-makers. This is the entertainment business, it's talent-driven. It's not process-driven, it's not spreadsheet-driven, it's talent driven - just like the film business.

When we started with our signing of Itagaki-san and his Team Ninja guys in Japan who are building a game for us, and we move on to Patrice, then we have a major announcement coming from a major piece of talent in the games industry who we're going to be building a series of games with - as well as releasing our first game with Tim Schafer, who's one of the finer talents in the industry.

You're seeing that we respect talent, and we've built a system on the core side in particular that's creatively supportive - it's about finding inspired vision and supporting that vision. It's not marketing-driven, in the sense that our marketers are partnered with our product guys to take the inspiration, find their inspiration in their campaign and push it out.

We're not a company - and I've experienced this in the past - where "marketing tells us what to do." Marketing does not tell us what to make, what the features should be - that comes from artists, sort of like the best parts of the film business when it was at its finest. It was artist-driven, and that's when the greatest films came out.

We're trying to use that system here, and it works two ways - one, I believe we're going to get the greatest, most exciting games, but it also becomes a really inviting place to work for artists. That's a huge initiative here and we're executing on that. You're seeing talent start to choose to work at THQ - it's really exciting and it is an achievement of a goal.

Absolutely they should. They're doing it for the film business on a state-by-state basis, and a little bit for the games business... but it's about competition. It's a hard one - I've dealt with this in the film and television business in my past. As an American it was a little bit hard to pack my bags and go to Canada in a sense, and leave a crew behind that I'd made film and television with to go and start with a new crew.

But the way I dealt with it was, my job and what inspires me is to put the most value on the screen for the consumer, whether that's a film-goer or a gamer. That really is our mission - to make the best games, and I have to put that before some of the other emotional feelings around a homeland, so to speak.

People can judge it any way they choose, but that is why we're going to Canada - to give, ultimately, everyone in America, Europe, Asia-Pac, the best gaming experience. That's our responsibility and that's what our business is about.

I wish that Los Angeles or California would give us 37.5 per cent on the labour; then we'd be building out here. If it was in Manchester we'd be building out there. If it was in Lyon, we'd be building out there. We're a global company with a global audience, so some of that stuff has to take a back seat, unfortunately.

Well, it's all about money. The talent in the UK is extraordinary - I actually spent a couple of years of my career when I was helping out with the early days of the Harry Potter franchise with EA, I worked closely with the team there on the first three games. I got to know a lot of teams in the UK - it's one of the greatest talent centres in the world.

So there's no issue with talent; it's just economics - and if the government finds subsidies there, absolutely we would build out. We have a studio up in Warrington that's an excellent studio, working on our Xbox Live/PSN digital games, so we do have a studio in the UK... but I'm sorry, it's all about money at the end of the day. And talent - but the UK has always been, and still is, one of the greatest talent pools in the industry... there's phenomenal talent out there.