The life and times of Dylan Cuthbert

"Mobile gaming took off a lot earlier here than it did in the West. 10 years ago a lot of graduates would go into that industry as it was paying better than the regular games industry. There's a lack of inflow of creativity at the lowest level.

"I think recently in the US you have a similar problem where people will go into Zynga or other social networking companies instead of more orthodox gaming companies."

While the Japanese industry at large might be staring down a rather depressing future, it seems Q-Games has plenty of interesting stuff in the pipeline. More PixelJunk is of course a given, though don't expect any more sequels in the vein of Shooter 2.

"We get a lot of calls to do an Eden sequel, and people also say they want more Monsters. We're actually doing a social network version of Monsters. Probably Facebook. It's a hell of a lot of fun.

"Apart from that I'd prefer not to do any more sequels for the time being. We have a couple of original ideas we want to pursue. You can get into this trap if you start doing that, where that's all you end up doing.

"When we made Shooter we had all these ideas left over, and we thought it would be such a waste not to do another, so that's why we did Shooter 2. That was necessary. Apart from that though, I always prefer to make original things. Every now and then, as fan service, make a sequel. But not one after another."

And what about StarFox, the title which made Cuthbert's name? Miyamoto recently went on record as saying that if StarFox 64 3D doesn't sell, Nintendo might be forced to call time on the franchise.

"He always says stuff like that," notes Cuthbert with a smile. "Eventually [there'll be another]. It's one of his characters. It'll make a re-appearance no matter what happens I think, though I can't speak for him obviously."

Does he have any ideas of where he'd like to take the franchise?

"We always have ideas but it needs Nintendo to come and speak to us about it first. We can't actually decide anything ourselves."

In any case, Cuthbert explains that pitching new projects to Nintendo is often a futile exercise. Given its huge resources and heavy prototyping culture, the chances are it's got there first.

"The problem with Nintendo is that they have so many internal staff that whatever idea you go and show them it's quite likely they've already developed a prototype for that kind of game internally. You're showing something they've already seen.

"It's weird. Several times in the past I've shown them stuff that I thought was totally new and original and they'll go away, come back and say 'actually we made this prototype last week' and it's the exact same game. But they never finish anything. The vast majority of stuff never makes it out.

"If you can work like that it's the best way to do it. Throw it all up against a wall and the thing that sticks is the thing you go with. We try and do the same thing with PixelJunk. We've had lots of ideas in the past that we just stopped. We'll find a more interesting idea and go with that instead."

The obvious gap in Q-Games' client list is Microsoft. Are there any plans to add that third feather to Q's cap?

"We did some stuff way back, but we don't have any interest right now," he reveals.

"We talk to them occasionally, but not really for anything in particular. It's just too much for us to do, to deal with all three of the big manufacturers. Just dealing with two is hard enough! We'll stay with Sony and Nintendo for the time being."

One other thing Cuthbert rules out, and in no uncertain terms, is a return to his homeland. Alas, it seems like the British games industry has lost one of its brightest talents for good.

"There's no way could I go back to Britain. I find the reverse snobbery really hard. Just because people like good things people make fun of that. The whole point of life is enjoying yourself and having good things, right?

"When I came to Japan, I found the opposite. It might be just the Victorian values in Britain but in Japan they're a lot more open to other people. You get a lot more expressiveness here. People have this image that Japan is this uniform society but it isn't at all. That's why you have all the crazy things. You've seen the games, for example. There's crazy stuff there, and that's an expression of individualism.

"In Britain I find everything tends to be more uniform. We tend to make interesting technology or something that looks cool but we don't go further than that, take it to its conclusion and make something unique. We fear ridicule."

Conservatism is certainly not an accusation that could be thrown at Q-Games' output. As detailed in Eurogamer's recent preview, off-the-wall audio plaything PixelJunk 4am might be the studio's most out-there concept yet. Who knows where Cuthbert's freewheeling outfit goes after that, but you can be sure it'll be well worth keeping an eye on.