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Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts screenshot

VideoGamer.com: Clearly people will experience Nuts & Bolts in many different ways. Do you think it's almost the case that video games are moving in the direction of simply being toys for people to play with?

NH: The balance has shifted. You get a lot of sandbox games now, where you can create your own fun outside of the main story or quest. You can certainly do that in our game, you can have a lot of fun just messing around.

EM: For some people, that's the most interesting part. I know it's what I enjoy the most. Rather than play a game through from start to finish, I like to get lost in it.

NH: I think that it does give you increased replayability and longevity, in terms of wanting to actually play a game. There's only so many times you can play a level if it has to be done just one way.

EM: Yeah. The amount of time it takes to actually complete a game is almost irrelevant, nowadays.

VideoGamer.com: So how does that change the way you approach the structure of a game like this? Elissa, you said you get more fun out of just messing around - but clearly you want people to play the game all the way through, right?

NH: That's an important point. Clearly if we were to give everyone all of the components at the start it would just be ridiculous - especially for young players. It would be way too much. As you probably saw for yourself, the full list of parts is quite daunting the first time you look at it. When you play the single-player, you start out with a very small subset initially, and it slowly expands as you progress through. That's really important, not to overwhelm people... But it's pretty cool as well, because later on in the game you will get new components that will let you go back to earlier challenges and do them in a completely different way. Perhaps you've got your first pair of wings - before I had to do it in a land-based vehicle; now I can do it in a plane.

VideoGamer.com: We understand that there will be some degree of connectivity between Nuts & Bolts and the forthcoming Xbox Live Arcade remake of the first game. How will that work?

NH: There's a Stop n' Swap feature which harks back to the old games. It's a bit of an in-joke really, a tribute to the fans. Basically Nuts & Bolts will detect your save game from the remake, and if you've progressed to a certain point then you'll find things like new components have been unlocked.

VideoGamer.com: Any plans for DLC?

NH: We haven't announced anything, or even really thought about it yet, but it's certainly possible... People always assume we're not allowed to to say, but actually most of the time we don't even know! But yeah, we'll finish this and then we'll think about what's next.

VideoGamer.com: The 360 is now as cheap as the Wii in most territories... do you think the console can achieve the same level of cross-market popularity?

EM: It goes back to what we were saying earlier. Games have evolved since the 90s, and I think the consoles have to as well.

NH: Nintendo have certainly done a great job of penetrating the family market.

EM: Yeah. It's a massive market, and I think Microsoft is quite keen to take a chunk of it.

NH: I think they're doing a lot of stuff with games like Lips, which works along similar lines - it's the kind of game you can see everyone playing at Christmas, with your whole family as a group. Going down that route, I think games like SceneIt? are quite important to Microsoft and the Xbox. And then there are people like us trying to make games that appeal to people other than first-person shooter fans.

EM: And there's stuff like Rock Band. There are a lot of good third-party games available now.

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