Ben Ward: Creating launch titles is always a double edged sword: on one hand, you get the acclaim and mindshare of being there right at the start of a consoles launch. On the other hand, the team has to work to unmovable deadlines, with unfinished hardware and software, and often with targets that keep moving. There were things that we’d have loved to put into PGR3, but when push came to shove we’d much rather have made the game polished and complete rather than unfinished… so that’s what we did.

With PGR4 we’ve got the final hardware, we’ve got a great team who are experienced with working with the Xbox 360, and we’ve got the time to really make PGR4 the best it can be. The new feature list speaks for itself: a brand new career mode, a dynamic weather system, an iconic vehicle set, PGR On Demand, a new party-based matchmaking system, a new stats web site (PGRNations.com), and of course, motorbikes!

G: Have you had to rebalance the kudos system to even out the difference between bikes and cars?

BW: Yeah, we’ve tweaked the Kudos system a little, but not in any major way. It certainly wasn’t a huge fuss to update the car kudos - we did a few things which make sense like add “Top Speed” kudos for the faster vehicles… things like that.

The bikes on the other hand have entirely new ways of earning Kudos. Of course, you can powerslide on a bike but it’s really not the same as powersliding in a car. You can’t throw a bike into corners like you can with its four-wheeled cousin, it’s really a different kettle of fish and the Kudos system had to reflect this.

So when racing with motorbikes in PGR4 you can wheelie, endo, slide, and perform “stunts” all in an effort to gain Kudos. Stunts include moves like standing up when wheeling, or punching the air when powersliding. After all, PGR is all about fun!

G: For a series that's been car based since Metropolis Street Racer (Dreamcast), adding bikes is a sizeable leap that, we'd imagine, won't sit too well with some diehard fans of the series. How much bike versus car action will there be and will it be possible to play through the whole game using just one or the other type of machine?

BW: Yes we’ve seen this reaction a little, but to be honest, probably not as much as we were expecting. Gamers generally have been pretty accommodating to the idea of having bikes in the game, and I think they’re giving Bizarre the benefit of the doubt right now.

Of course there’s a kind of stigma associated with motorbikes in video games. A few titles have tried the cars Vs bikes thing, but there really hasn’t been a game yet which has meshed them together and done it in any memorable way. So that’s always been a goal at Bizarre: to prove that cars and bikes can race together, and be totally kickass.

That’s not to say we’re asking every single die hard car racer to become a biker and vice versa. We let you play through the entire game in just cars or just bikes if you prefer one or the other, but realistically we expect most gamers to go for a combination of both as they work their way through the career mode.

G: We've seen developers becoming more ambitious with their racing games of late. Sega Rally has its deformable track surfaces, PGR4 has its weather system, etc. What do you think has brought about this sudden burst of innovation?

BW: We don’t really look sideways at all the other guys… we’ve got our own objectives and our own aims. It’s cool to see other companies coming up with new ideas in their racers, but certainly we find that coming up with the ideas isn’t the hard bit: it’s the scheduling and actually building them which is tough!

G: One thing we know bugged a lot of people in PGR3 was the Race Against The Clock mode, where you couldn't do even basic things like turn off the ghost cars. What changes have you made to the Time Attack mode in PGR4 to address this?

BW: Time Attack is really a step above what Race Against the Clock was in PGR3. Of course all the niggles have been ironed out… you can race against zero to three ghosts, depending on your preference. All options can be set, and each track has a leaderboard for extra incentive to shave off those milliseconds.

One of the coolest things with the new Time Attack mode is the integration of PGR On Demand. Now you can fill a ghost slot with your fastest time or a ghost from the Xbox Live Leaderboards as you expect, but you can also pull them down from the On Demand server however you please. Want to race against just your friend’s ghosts? No problem.

G: PGR4 looks very polished and detailed, from what we've seen so far. How far would you say you're pushing the console now?

BW: Developers always push the console to the maximum power they know how to obtain at that time.

G: If we include Metropolis Street Racer as part of the PGR dynasty, this is the fifth game in the series. We remember Bizarre Creations once saying that the aim for MSR was "to have people walk past Metropolis in a shop window and think that it's video footage rather than a game" and to create "living, breathing cities" to race in. How close do you think you've come to fulfilling these objectives, and how has this aim changed over the years and various sequels?

BW: Photorealism is a tough one to crack - I’ll let you be the judge of whether we’ve come close to that yet. But you’re correct in that aims have changed over the years. Graphics are not the most important thing now; a balance must be struck between all aspects which make up a game. We’ve really gone crazy with injecting gameplay and style into PGR4 to complement the graphics, but you’ll only really get to see this once you pick up the game and spend some time with it yourself.

G: Finally, if you could list three reasons why people should buy PGR4 when it's released, what would they be?

BW: