LONDON – From the ECTS show floor, GameSpot News spoke with Naughty Dog's (the creators of Crash Bandicoot – one of the most successful PlayStation franchises to date) Jason Rubin about the company's future PlayStation 2 game. Here's what we discussed:

　　GameSpot News: We've heard that you're developing a new character for an upcoming PlayStation 2 title and that this character will be somewhat Japanese in design. Can you tell us a little about that?

　　Jason Rubin: The marketing plan in Japan uses a different Crash from the marketing in the United States, and he looked different. And that's all well and good, but in the future we want to homogonize, and make everything one single view of the character worldwide. This time when we design a new character we're going to take the Japanese point of view into account a little earlier and then hopefully we'll get a more worldly character - one that doesn't need to be jury-rigged for each territory. We're older and smarter now.

　　GSN: Will Universal continue to make Crash games now that you're finished with the character?

　　JR: Universal Interactive owns the rights - we signed a three-project deal with them many, many years ago and created Crash for them and it's actually their license. I understand they are working on another game, but I honestly don't really know what is going on with that. Like I said, we sold them the rights so we're perfectly happy to say for us, the PlayStation and Crash were perfect - I wouldn't change a thing. But moving on to a new system, we designed Crash around the fact that you couldn't make a face smaller than a certain numbers of pixels on the screen or you couldn't see facial expressions. We didn't want the character to be too big so he had a huge face. There were a lot of subtle designs that we did that were based around the PlayStation. You'll notice that a lot of our characters are orange - well it just so happens that orange is a great color for the PlayStation to display. It's very easy to see. There are going to be differences in the future - the PlayStation 2 is a totally new set of rules. So we want to create a new character, and it's the perfect time for us to say let's go on and do something new. Take that system and figure out what it does best.

　　GSN: And the character you're designing now is going to be PlayStation 2 exclusive?

　　JR: Yes. And likewise we won't have any baggage when we go in. If it turns out that a really cool character has a metallic, shiny armor, that could be a possibility. If it turns out that we want huge amounts of flowing hair, we can do that. We couldn't do that on the PlayStation.

　　GSN: What are you finding is possible, development wise, on the PlayStation 2?Obviously the polygons are out of control…

　　JR: From an easy standpoint, it would be a no-brainer to make a character that uses as many polygons as this game ( referencing Crash Team Racing) uses for its entire game, per frame. Just the character. So take all of the characters and all the backgrounds, mush them together, and that number of polygons could easily be a character on the PlayStation 2. There are so many things you can do with a character that you just couldn't do before.

　　GSN: How many polygons does the average game, such as Crash have on the PlayStation?

　　JR: In a character based platform game Crash had, say, 532 polygons exactly.

　　GSN: But now, on the PlayStation 2, the main character could have 5,000?

　　JR: Yeah 5,000. Maybe 10,000. It could be more – it really comes down to how many polygons you need. You need more with Crash. We always could have used more with Crash. We could have made fingers, we could have made hair, we could have made him more fluid and have cleaner joints. On the PlayStation 2 you'll get to a point where added polygons don't help you much.

　　GSN: So you're going to be working with Sony exclusively on this?

　　JR: Yeah, absolutely. We love them as a publisher and there isn't really anyone else that we would rather work with. I mean really it comes down to Sony, Nintendo, and EA – at least in terms of American-centric publishers. Then you have Namco, Square, Capcom, and Konami… that's basically it for us as far as publishers. Sony's the best of them.

　　GSN: So Universal is not involved anymore at all?

　　JR: Right. When we signed up to do three titles with Universal we had no idea that we would be publishing with Sony. That was a dream, but it was something that we knew would happen. Our idea was really simple – there was a Mario for Nintendo, a Sonic for Sega. But Sony had no mascot type character, and our goal was quite similar: make a mascot for Sony. But we never in our wildest dreams believed Sony would actually pick it up and use it like they have. Now they never really adopted Crash as the mascot, they have a different kind of marketing strategy that Nintendo and Sega do. But having said that, we fulfilled our wildest Dreams – Crash has sold over 16 million units worldwide.

　　GSN: You didn't expect Crash to become synonymous with the PlayStation?

　　JR: Forget the video games industry, when Newsweek or Businessweek does an article on video games, Crash is the representative for the PlayStation. That was an absolutely huge thing for us. The thing was, with our deal with Universal it really just ended up being us working on the games and Sony publishing them. Universal was just the middleman. So we did the smart business move and took out the middleman.

　　GSN: Do you hope your next character will become a mascot for Sony's next system? Does he fit into that type of mold?

　　JR: Sony doesn't have the same kind of strategy that Nintendo has. Nintendo has a very child-oriented marketing strategy. It's based around the fact that you must love Mario so you must love Nintendo. Whereas Sony has a much broader approach – if you want to play video games the PlayStation is the best medium for it, what do you like? They're not trying to force a mascot or kids' games on you. Say for me, Gran Turismo is what video gaming is. I'm not interested in Crash. Fine. Other people, they're interested in Crash. So I don't know that Sony will ever really have a mascot. Having said that, I'm hoping our next character will have just as much success as Crash. Kids look at Sony and Crash being interwoven. Although I should say that I think we're going to be moving a bit up in age group.

　　GSN: More of an adventure game?

　　JR: Um, actually no. I think we're really going to stick with the action. I just love the ability to just pick up and play a level and not have to worry about my long term goal. I just want to get in there and just smack the character around and if I want to quit I want to be able to put it down and not worry about what I might have forgotten. I mean I have nothing against Zelda or Final Fantasy – I love them both – but those aren't our style. With Crash we had the idea that someone could just pick it up and didn't have to think about it. We'll probably just stick with that. That doesn't necessarily mean level-based, and that certainly doesn't mean we aren't going free roaming. I guarantee we're doing the free roaming camera angles. We had a lot of fun with this game (pointing to Crash Team Racing) having the real free roaming engine.

　　GSN: So far we've only seen quickly thrown together demos on the PlayStation 2 . Are you finding that there's a good learning curve on development for the system?

　　JR: I think with the first generation of titles that get rushed out to meet the release date you won't see the full potential of the system. It'll take a while. Crash was a second generation title, not at launch.

　　GSN: Is your next game going to be ready for launch?

　　JR: Probably not. We're not really the type of company that races for launch. We race to be the first second-generation game. That's our attitude and goal.

　　GSN: We look forward to hearing more about your project in the near future.

　　JR: Definitely.