THR: But you are the best company to talk about hurdles.

Miller: "Prey" actually took about 4-1/2 years. The first year went down the drain because we licensed the Doom 3 engine a year too early. When we licensed it from Id, they said it would be completed in about six to eight months, but it wasn't done for another 18. So, in actuality, "Prey" was a 3-1/2-year project if you toss out that first year, which certainly deserves to be tossed out.

THR: That's still a long time to develop one game.

Miller: You said it. But when you're doing a new franchise ... I mean, our whole philosophy is that we really don't care how long it takes to make that first game or how much money we have to put into it. Because we feel we're making more than just a game. Hopefully, it will be a franchise which is going to have a lot of value. It's like when we made "Max Payne." The game itself cost $4 million and 4-1/2 years to build. We said, okay, we might only make $8 million in sales, but think about what the franchise will be worth. As it turned out, the game made $20 million in royalties ... and we later sold the franchise for almost $50 million.

THR: You must have done even better with your "Duke Nukem" franchise.

Miller: Oh, absolutely. Back in 1996, it took us two years and $350,000 to build the first "Duke" game. Of course, things were a lot different back then. And we've recently been offered $80 million for the franchise.

THR: What about the latest "Duke" game ... the one that seems to be taking forever to build?

Miller: We've put about $7.5 million into that and we've been working on it since late 1998. So it really hasn't been that much of an investment. And once it comes out, if it's as successful as we think it'll be, we'll make that money back in the first day or two of sales.