Bulletstorm: We're misunderstood

I don't know. We are pretty ballsy. We definitely want a couple of million units sold. But it is very hard right now to ask, is two million a success or is it just very decent? Does it need to be three, four million to consider it a total blockbuster hit? I don't know at this point.

The first magic number is a million units. Surprisingly, not a lot of games are able to reach that. I'm hoping it's going to be huge, but I don't want to jinx it.

It's multiplatform and there are more consoles out there at this point, but look what we're competing against: Gears 1 is six million units. That is crazy. We will see.

There is one difference between us and Gears. When Gears came out it was a technical extravaganza that was shocking visually. For me that was the first real next generation game, and it was a year after the premier of the 360. Many people bought it for the visuals then discovered the great gameplay.

In our case, there are already a lot of great looking games out there. So even though I consider our visuals among the best in the world, I don't think that's going to be number one for people. The strength of our game will be the world of mouth.

I'm not entirely sure about the initial sales. They're going to be strong because EA is dedicated to the title and they will market the f*** out of this title. They're going to be strong.

But we're one of these few games that has a very long shelf life because the reaction we've seen, that once someone gets in contact with Bulletstorm comes out converted, that is an equivalent of the world of mouth that will happen. Once people start playing Bulletstorm, they'll go to their friend, 'Dude, you won't believe what happened in Bulletstorm.'

Again, it's not me being coy. I'm not famous enough to be modest yet.

I'm getting there. But the only real truth is that really, it's that one little Hollywood book – nobody knows anything. Can you name a game that was an amazing, awesome game that never got the sales it deserved?

There you go. So things like that happen. You're asking me this question at this very sensitive period when we are losing our mind. We start doubting everything. We're so close to completion the madness kicks in. Is it balanced properly? Is the pacing right? Maybe that boss should be harder. You go mental at this phase of the project.

When John Carmack was asked, 'Did you know Doom was going to be a hit?' he said, 'Well, yeah, because when we were doing it we knew what we had in our hands and it played great and everybody felt really good about it.'

I'm not that cocky, but at least I can confirm we have the same feeling internally. Everybody loves the game, so I'm hoping for the best.