Gamasutra: What do you think of statements from companies to the effect that the first round of next-gen console games will require exponentially increased budgets?

MR: I guess one of the biggest things we've seen that's bothered us lately is big companies like EA going and tossing out "it's going to take $30 million to make a next-gen game" and we just don't see that. I mean we're making our next-gen games for 25-50% more than our previous generation games, and when we hear those kinds of numbers, we think that's just bravado, that's just them trying to scare their competitors out of the marketplace.

We don't subscribe to that, we don't think it has to be ridiculously expensive to make next-generation games, and we've done a lot of work - like our visual scripting system is a perfect example - in making our tools really optimized so that artists and designers can get the most out of the engine without having to involve a huge amount of programmer resources. And artists are relatively scalable, and designers as well, so we really don't see the crazy next-gen numbers that they're talking about, it just doesn't seem believable.