In the UK Guitar Hero is No.1. How can you unseat this franchise?
Guitar Hero absolutely is the market leader in Europe, but thats not the case back in the US, so we have been able to do this before. We think we have better gameplay, better song selection and a better online presence. When you access Rock Bands DLC we have over 1,000 songs, whereas they have a third of that.
We really believe that with the launch of Rock Band 3 which is a significant upgrade to what we had before we believe we can take market share aware from them.
At the end of the day, what we are trying to do is isolate what our consumer is looking for, and hopefully grow his or her participation in our games. Gaining market share is our secondary objective. We want to please our consumers and expand our consumer base.
Music is one of those things where there may be some songs on Guitar Hero that isnt in our title that a consumer wants to play, so hopefully they will enjoy both products. So both businesses can be compatible with each other.
How important is Rock Bands digital element to your overall business?
I think it is critical no matter what entertainment category youre in. For us the disc has always been the entry point for our game, but then that disc opens up a whole other world of opportunities through DLC.
For example, we can feature a new artist every month for download. DLC allows the franchise to stay alive and it keeps it interesting. But one is not separate from the other.
We dont see it is a digital business and a boxed business, both are connected to one another. We know that space at retail is tight and expensive, and it has to be a huge opportunity for retail to give up that space. So digital allows us to compliment what we are doing on a day-to-day basis.
Do you think it will ever reach a stage where you wont need to release a disc and can just update the game through DLC?
I dont know. The consumer will tell us how they want to get their entertainment. But I dont see that happening in the short term. I see that there is still a need for us to distribute product through bricks and mortar.
One of your digital initiatives has been the Rock Band Network. Whats been the response to that?
It has been really fun and is exceeding our expectations in the number of artists that are using it. We expected artists that have yet to make a living out of music to be putting their songs on the network. But what we are finding is that very well-known artists are also using it were more than doubling the number of artists we anticipated.
So you dont agree that the music genre is in terminal decline?
Yes, when you look at share year-over-year, it is in decline. But what has happened is that people now have the plastic peripherals in their homes. You could argue the instruments should never have been part of the share in the first place, because in terms of software our business was up 73 per cent year-on-year. I believe that was also the case with Guitar Hero. I think that is where we are in the evolution of music games. Most people have their instruments and they are only looking to buy the software. Music games are still significant in the marketplace  theyre the number two genre behind shooters.
Like any big genre, it will have its ups and downs, but it will be built on new content and creativity, and those will be the things that decide whether consumers want to keep investing in music games.
