Microsoft's Shane Kim

Yeah, I think we have a marketing partnership with them where that's a good thing for us. But we would not be involved in setting the price of the product, right? We've had exclusive content in on our platforms before, and there's been no differentiation in pricing. As far as simultaneous release of product... I can only speak for Microsoft Game Studios, but that's been a big priority for many years. I can't remember the last time we had a release that was not virtually simultaneous with Europe.

Yeah... On the one hand I'd say Microsoft feels bad about that. On the other hand it is fairly complex, actually, to secure rights in many different markets. I don't have enough appreciation for that because it's not my part of the business, but what the Xbox Live guys have to go through to get the rights and then to ingest all that content... I do understand. The reality is it's getting there later, but it's not as simple as localising the title. I'm glad I don't run this part of the business because securing the rights to that video content is a pretty heinous effort. It's pretty challenging. So that explains some of the timing delay.

Not this year.

They launched with Resistance and we've sold nearly 5 million units of Gears of War 1. I think we won that battle. That's why I believe it's going to be the biggest title this holiday. Killzone's out of the holiday, despite some of the earlier statements that were made. We'll see what happens with Resistance 2, but we've gone head-to-head before. I still feel very confident in the quality. You're seeing it here - what Epic is doing with Gears of War 2 is taking a very good title and really extending it even farther, in my opinion. So I still think we're in very good shape to have the biggest hit of the year in the holiday.

Yep.

That's actually a better question for Cliff.

[Laughs] Well, that's Cliff's maths, so what can I say? It's better for the creators to talk about what they're feeling is on the topic. I will say this: I think we all challenge ourselves. Epic really took the challenge on. Look, we don't just want to churn out a sequel.

We want a more badass sequel, right, whether that's 12 or 11 or ten. We just want it to be more...

I think if you look at most if not all the titles we've done, we've created franchises and then launched future sequels. We've always tried to take the approach that the sequel has to be better than the previous version. Whether that's Halo 2 or Halo 3, Forza 2 or Fable 2 and what Peter [Molyneux] is doing with that - and again what Epic's doing with Gears of War 2... I'm not sure you'd say Forza 2 was more badass than Forza 1, but that is our general philosophy when it comes to sequels. We're not trying just to churn those out and milk the franchises,

No. I prefer to communicate that orally.