Games publisher Player One is gunning for the US and iPhone, with serious backup in the form of THQ Wireless. ME sat down with MD Pete Russell…

Paint us a picture of Player One as 2008 draws to a close…

During the last two years we’ve been working hard to establish the franchises that deliver for us, and that’s been doubly difficult considering we operate in the sports vertical. But I believe we’ve got ourselves to the point where we know what our winning line-up is. And, as a publisher, we’re very lucky to have a long-term development agreement in place with Shadowlight Games, which is an incredibly accomplished studio. Our investment in them is now bearing fruit.

How can a company like Player One flourish alongside huge multi-national rivals?

For starters we’re in control of our roadmap and committed to launching 20 games in 2009, having published 13 so far this year. The industry is not the Wild West it once was. The top publishers are all about market share. Below that there a group of companies that I think are involved in too many areas by trying to combine publishing with distribution and aggregation.

Then you have companies like Player One. We know our core competencies and we’ve nailed our colours to the mast. The opportunity is not just flogging a £5 game on an operator portal. If you have a successful franchise, you have to ask  what else can you do with it.

What are these opportunities?

iPhone is clearly one possible destination and by luck or by judgement I think that store is going to do for games what it did for digital music in terms of pushing it into the mass market.

But the meritocracy of the App Store and Apple’s own quality controls mean that content has to be top notch. We started our iPhone roadmap back in March and we’ve got a launch schedule of eight games over the next three or four months, including Ernie Els, Bass Fishing Mania, Table Tennis, Pokermillion, Ronnie O’Sullivan Snooker and PDC Darts.

The other part of where we think the market’s going is Wii Ware, Xbox Live Arcade and other digital distribution channels. For a smaller publisher like us it’s a big opportunity. The creative processes for an iPhone and Xbox game are not dissimilar. Xbox is certainly no more arduous, again as long as the quality is there for the game to rise above the rest. Put simply, mobile will always be our main focus, but we’ll head off into different areas when we have franchises that we think will work.

Tell us about your distribution agreement with THQ Wireless…

That arrangement takes Player One from being a predominantly UK- focused publisher to sending our products out around the world. It makes our pitch to licensors even more compelling. Suddenly we can promise much wider geographical reach. We’ve launched three games already with THQ in the US and by the middle of next year we’ll have launched another eight. That’s eight more US releases than we’ve ever had before without increasing our cost base.

Do you think more publishers will be entering similar partnerships?

I think publishers outside of the top tier will have to follow a similar route. The challenge to everyone is how to squeeze all kinds of genres into a portfolio without becoming an aggregator – it’s really difficult to do without losing identity. The flipside for us is trying to sell prducts we specialise in – sports – to operators who sometimes don’t understand them.

THQ Wireless is great as it knows our own products as well as it knows its own. In fact I’d like to think it’s absolutely a complementary relationship. I think 2009 is going to be a big year for both of us.