I'm interested to see what's going to come out of it. Hometek was kind of dissolved-ish at some point, and then it was built back up again to be larger than before. I'm curious to see what the results of that are going to be.

RH: You and me both! Actually, I'll say that we, fairly recently, had some exceptionally good success at recruiting some very strong, well-known industry talent into this new entity of Namco.

Do you have any examples of that?

RH: No. (laughs) It will become apparent at the right time. When we're able to, we'll be able to talk about that, and it will be pretty obvious. You'll go, "Oh! I know those guys."

Excellent. There hasn't been any product resultant of this so far, right?

RH: Yeah. Really, I think the first one that will be somewhat representative of this was what was shown yesterday, with Afro Samurai.

It's got quite a good visual style. It's like a very detailed Ukiyo-e painting, like Japanese style. It's pretty neat looking. We'll see how that goes. It looks good, though. It's a good property, and there's a lot of good potential there. Fingers crossed.

RH: Both of ours.

Yeah. So we were talking very briefly yesterday about the reasoning for Darth Vader being in one SoulCalibur and Yoda being in the other. Do you have any...

Namco Bandai Games' Soulcalibur IV

RH: There is a whole strategic plan that has resulted in what we have here at this time. As time goes by, there will be more revelations about how that will continue to unfold. It hasn't been fully revealed yet, what's going on there.

So this is not like putting Link in the previous games. This is a universe merging?

RH: Well, there's just more to be revealed on all this. It was actually held as a pretty complete, full secret. There was practically no one inside the company who knew about it. It was kept to be a highly confidential situation that was pretty much a surprise to everyone when it was revealed.

Did the idea come from the Namco side, or the Lucas side, if you know?

RH: I believe that came from the Namco side.

It seems like it probably would. So I guess you're not directly involved with these titles, as you're high up. Are you managing the direction or the scope of these games at all?

RH: Actually, one of the things that I like about this particular situation is that I do get a chance to get right down into the game design and documents, working with the team, and talking with the guys, and coaching as much as I can. I really enjoy that part.

That's good. Are you able to make changes on things? Are you playing things constantly?

RH: Oh yeah. Yep.

Excellent. What kind of games have you been playing recently, if you actually have time to play games?

RH: That's the hardest thing. There are so many games that I want to play, and having recently been joining Namco, all at once there's a whole bunch of games that I need to come up to speed on. I've got to sit and play the whole back catalog and totally understand it, and do the job at the same time.

But in addition to that, I've been working through... I was a really late comer to it, but I really enjoyed BioShock. I was really into it. I haven't made it quite all the way through it yet, but it's very well done, and I liked it a lot. I've enjoyed Ace Combat 6. It's a game style I particularly like, and I think the guys have done an amazing job with it.

It sure does look nice.

RH: Yeah. It looks great, but it also plays pretty good. It's a lot of fun to get online and play it in a group. It's a lot of fun.