When Seamus Blackley left Microsoft last month, there was quite a bit of speculation regarding his next project. Alluding to the project in an earlier interview with GameSpot, Blackley said, "It's going to let people create some really cool and really creative products, but in a fun way." It was assumed that Blackley and the partners on that next project would form some kind of development house, but that's not entirely the case. Blackley, fellow former Xbox team member Kevin Bachus, and industry veterans Eugene Mauro and Mark Hood have announced the formation of the Capital Entertainment Group, the first truly independent production company that will help directly fund game development companies and help publishers absorb some of the initial costs of promoting new games. While CEG will be focused on the business side of the industry, the ultimate goal is to help development teams create innovative games. "We're setting up a business so that it enables us to focus on great games," Blackley said.

Naturally, when companies like CEG break onto the scene, comparisons are drawn between it and companies that have tried to accomplish similar goals in the past, such as Gathering of Developers, which tried to allow developers to focus strictly on games and keep them from being preoccupied with the stresses of working with a publisher. But that comparison is not entirely valid, as CEG is actually structured differently. "One of the challenges that GodGames had was that they had a fixed stable of developers," Blackley said. "That meant they couldn't pick the best developer on the planet to create a specific game. More importantly, as a publisher, they needed to have a portfolio--they had to [have a lineup of games for each quarter] and that certainly hampered them."