GameDaily BIZ: What plans does Sega have for the Wii MotionPlus? How much does that excite you?

Sean Ratcliffe: I think it's a great development. I think the Wiimote and how that works has obviously enabled developers and publishers to look at games in a new and fresh way. With that announcement, you get greater fidelity in terms of being able to interact with objects on the screen. That's going to allow us to go deeper in places in terms of activity. How are we planning to use that? We still need to work on how we're going to incorporate it. We will figure out how we can incorporate it into some if not all of all our titles, where it makes sense. I can think of a number of games right now that we would probably apply that to.

BIZ: What's your take on the new Xbox Live Avatars and will Sega be including those avatars in its own games?

SR: We've known for some time some of the directions Microsoft is going to take. I definitely think the ability for consumers to personalize what they're doing, incorporate their character into games or whatever, the whole trend is heading in that direction... greater customization, greater personalization. We definitely want to be part of that, and we'll certainly look at incorporating that feature into some of our games. Again, it has to be appropriate. We'll be there with the other third parties.

BIZ: During the Nintendo conference, Mario & Sonic for the DS was highlighted as one of the "evergreen" titles. Did that game perform better on the DS or Wii?

SR: It depends on where you look. I think the Wii has outsold it in North America. Overall, which is the key message, it's sold over 7 million units globally and is still selling now. And when we come to the actual Olympics, we'll be re-promoting the game. It's the perfect time to go back on TV and talk to all those consumers who went out and bought a Wii or DS and say hey, here's a game that's relevant.

BIZ: Nintendo pointed out during its conference that 19 Wii titles from third parties had sold over 400K units, but it's taken a while for companies to figure the Wii out and 400K doesn't seem necessarily seem like the greatest sales milestone either. What do you think has been the problem with third-party software?

SR: Well, from our point of view, with Mario & Sonic having sold so well, we don't think there is a problem. But actually, I think it goes beyond Mario & Sonic. We got a great lineup of software on both platforms (Wii and DS). It's about taking a specific approach. If you're porting a game, that's probably not going to do so well. Both of those platforms have unique capabilities. It's about thinking about the different ways of exploiting that technology. Sonic Chronicles is developed exclusively on the DS, and it's an RPG, and we know RPGs do well on that platform. And we're partnering with a developer [BioWare] that's renowned for that type of gameplay. So we're crafting that game and experience for that platform. Likewise, when we look at something like MadWorld, we want to take advantage of the Wii.

The Wii platform is for everyone, but that doesn't mean you dumb down the games and that it's only casual for moms and dads and little Johnny. There are also mature audiences with Wii, and where are the games for them? So MadWorld addresses that. I think we maybe understand the platform a bit better than other publishers, and that's borne out in our publisher ranking on both Wii and DS – if you take Nintendo out as a first party, currently we're number three. You shouldn't be too tunnel vision about it, though. There are lots of gamers who bought a Wii, and of course there are some evry easy, pick-up-and-play casual experiences there, but don't ignore the mature audience either. So we're delighted to have a game like MadWorld on there, but we're equally delighted to have Samba De Amigo, which arguably started the music/rhythm genre back in Dreamcast days. It was ahead of its time in many ways. So right there, we have polar opposites in terms of content, but each one has been crafted specifically for the Wii platform.

BIZ: Speaking of Samba De Amigo, is Sega looking to get more involved in the music genre, which is obviously huge in the industry right now?

SR: I think Sega, without giving too much away...We're excited to have Samba on the Wii. It's a party in a box. But we could definitely imagine us doing more with Samba, and I think kids and family content is an area of types of games we want to develop – games where kids and parents can play together and social gaming.