Xbox visionary: THQ didn't have a digital strategy

THQ's lack of a digital strategy helped attract Seamus Blackley's Innovative Leisure to a publishing deal, the father of the original Xbox has said.

"THQ didn't really have a digital strategy and I thought that was good," said Blackley, speaking to Eurogamer.

Innovative Leisure is aimed at non-traditional platforms, such as mobile.

"The one thing that's true about these new platforms is that if you think you know what you're talking about you're just completely wrong. Anybody who says, 'This is how it's going to work,' is completely wrong, because the target is moving so fast. And the target is defined by whatever is coolest to play.

"However you happen to pay for whatever is currently coolest to play is the darling business model of the moment, but trying to chase that from a business standpoint is really dumb. You chase it from a gameplay standpoint. And Danny [Bilson, THQ games boss] totally got that."

Blackley said it was "prototyping everything" it currently has going on iOS, but said there were titles it could put on "all sorts of different platforms," adding having a company like THQ behind it, for marketing and other things, can be "really useful".

Blackley founded Innovative Leasure alongside a group of Atari vets who've worked on titles like Asteroids, Centipede and Gauntlet. It announced its deal with THQ last week.

Blackley was one of the original team that worked on the Xbox project at Microsoft.