Interviews// Martyn Brown - Team 17

SPOnG: NXE seems to have worked for Microsoft. I still can't get into it...

Martyn Brown: I do think that the Sony shop's miles better than it used to be. When it first came out it was awful.


SPOnG: So, what else for the future? You've shown us some stuff that we can't talk about... what can you talk about?

Martyn Brown: Alien Breed of course. People will be really surprised when they see that, it really raises the bar on digital download. So, that'll be coming out on Live Arcade initially, but I can't say when.


SPOnG: Breed for iPhone?

Martyn Brown: Yeah, at some point in the future. Certainly Breed will be following on PC and PSN eventually. That's coming in episodes as well, which is a new thing for us.


SPOnG: So, talking about developing for iPhone. Something like Chinatown Wars on DS … that worked really well in that top-down way.

Martyn Brown: Yeah, certainly a way of looking at it. Fortunately the technology with iPhone and other handheld devices, it's sort of the way we were 15-16 years ago. So, we kind of knew how to make games for that kind of technology. So, it's opening up new areas again. And old areas, but we can use 15 years of experience of what we've learnt doing things right... mostly... and applying that to the modern remakes really. So, we certainly plan to do that.

There's a bunch of things coming out: there's a new Worms for Wii, and PSP and probably Dsi coming down the line as well. All digital. And some other new stuff, off in the distance, which we can't discuss... so... well, it's all non-Worms stuff as well.


SPOnG: So, you're making vastly more money now that you've cut out the retail end, the publishers... vastly more money...

Martyn Brown: Well, yeah to a certain.... the games are being sold an awful lot cheaper. But even within 25% of retail price we still make double what we did on retail games. So, we like to think of it as win-win. The consumers are getting great value games, and we're not getting shafted.

Because while you're doing retail games, you're obviously battling piracy and battling the second-hand market, the rental market...

So, we've got all these things where the retailers have done pretty well for quite a while, but I think there's going to be pressures there. And it just suits us to be direct with the customer and direct with the platform holder. Everything's going to be digital....

SPOnG: Everything's doing to be digital? But when 'anaysts' say things like in ten years time 50% of everything will be digital download...

Martyn Brown: For us it's now. So, I don't care how long. We're there already. So, it can only grow for us. If we've got a business model that works now then surely we should do reasonably all right in the future?


SPOnG: Thanks very much Martyn.

Martyn Brown: No worries.