Walking on air

You’ve built Oxygen to a position where it releases top-line titles associated with recognisable franchises on all popular formats. How have you ensured this increasing level of success?

Primarily thanks to consumers who desire the kind of content we create and retail partners that are prepared to put our games on their shelves.

Oxygen Interactive has always endeavoured to provide gaming entertainment for the mainstream consumer – initially with original, family-friendly content with Liquid Games and more recently with Oxygen Games’ sociable, lifestyle-based titles.

We’re pleased the mainstream segment has grown so strongly and grateful that retail has supported the titles we’ve developed for these consumers.

Do you feel that you have cultivated a good relationship with retail?

We’re certainly pleased with the way the relationship we have with UK retail has evolved. For a publisher of our size, each of our titles often faces off against the goliath portfolio offerings from the larger publishers and we’re delighted with the success of our titles to date. We really appreciate the mindshare and support we’ve been given for our games from our customers and the stakeholders that have made this success possible.

Would you say that you are you gearing up to the most successful Q3/Q4 period in your history?

Of course. We’re fielding a strong quartet of lifestyle gaming entertainment titles this holiday season on Wii, PS2 and PC, all backed with our biggest marketing and PR spend to date, including appearances with the talents and celebrities that have been involved in the games. Retailers, consumers or journalists should not be surprised if they’re mocked by Hansen, ambushed by Cheggers or thrashed by Taylor.

Has your strategy changed much in the last 12 months given the evolution of the market?

We’re still pursuing our strategy of providing relevant and sociable gaming entertainment to the (now not so new) mainstream gamers and in fact the market evolution plays to our strategy.

The popularity of the Wii, PS2 and DS, the diversification of the consumer base and the increasing demand for sociable, pick-up and put-down style games are all trends that we provide for in our games. Tactically, we’ve moved to the Wii and incorporated more real-world brands and licensed talent into the titles we release.

You’re starting to add Wii to your multi-platform titles. What are the main advantages of developing for that system?

The gameplay possibilities with the Wii and its popularity with mainstream gamers make the console a natural fit for the content we are creating for our target audience.

How would you like to see the business progress in the rest of 2007/2008? What are your expectations for the next 12 months?

We expect that this holiday season King Of Clubs, Cheggers’ Party Quiz, Alan Hansen’s Sports Challenge and PDC World Championship Darts 2008 will perform as successfully as Darts did for us last year.

In terms of the business as a whole, the main areas of focus moving forwards will be infusing our titles with more territory-based relevance, expanding our global operations and our extending our developer relations.