Down the road I can see them doing something where you just have a PC that sits in the centre of your house and puts out your games. The problem with the cloud is that you have a latency problem. But if it's on your PC locally in your house, those latency problems go away and it's pumping it out to receptors - your TV or your iPad or whatever it is.
And Steam has the advantage that you start out with this huge library. Others have started to realise that. Sony certainly has, servicing its own library. To me, the exciting thing is making sure that gamers are given the convenience of not locking them to one particular couch. That's the strength of the Vita streaming, and something I also like about the Wii U.
Speaking of the Wii U - was it ever a consideration for Infinite?
KL: We could always get it on. I don't know if people like to hear this, but before we do any game there's a financial component where the business people come together and they tell me if there's a business case. With the game itself, Take 2 generally doesn't do any analysis of whether BioShock Infinite is going to make money, but they can look at a platform doing a port and have an assessment of that. And I trust them to tell me whether it makes sense. It doesn't affect me that much because we'd probably outsource it. There really has to be an impetus of 'hey, this could be good for the company'.
What do you think about where gaming and gaming tech is heading?
KL: I tend to be a bit of an optimist. You had this period where it was like 'Oh my God, niche games are going away because there are shelf space concerns and no publisher is going to fund them.'
And then all of a sudden you've got digital distribution and you've got Kickstarter. And who knows if Kickstarter will last forever? But the notion of crowdfunding…I think that's here to stay. And so I love the fact you now have all these games where you thought 'I'd never see another game like that again'. All of a sudden there's a business model for it. I think you're seeing more variety of games now, not less. But are you buying them at Gamestop for your Xbox 360 or are you playing them on your iPhone or are you downloading them from Steam?
What have been some of your top games from the last couple of years?
KL: XCOM was huge for me. I also really enjoyed Far Cry 3. I really liked playing this game called Unity of Command, a turn-based war game. It's very elegant. I've been playing Borderlands 2. I love the Sim games. Actually, I've been playing a lot of Rocksmith. It's sort of like Guitar Hero but with an actual guitar and actual tablature. It's awesome. All of a sudden you're playing lead guitar with Skynyrd on an actual lead guitar. It does that thing where it scales up and down depending on how well you're doing, but it's just tablature really. There's no goofy plastic. That's really good when you come home and you've only got 20 minutes and you can just knock out a couple of songs.
So it's safe to say your love for gaming hasn't changed…
KL: I have gaming in every room of my house. In my office I tend to play a lot of PC games and a lot of Xbox 360 and PS3 games. In my bedroom I've got my iPad, my iPhone, my Vita and my 3DS. Oh, and my Wii U because I like to play games on the controller in bed. My bedside is really crowded with gaming stuff. I just like being surrounded by games. Even upstairs today I've got my iPad, my iPhone, a Wii U, and my Vita. I was thinking of getting a Surface so I have a PC machine.
