Idea "inspired" from reading reviews of ICO (and various other games), a PS2 game where you have to protect a fragile princess and make a path for you both to escape a huge castle together. The idea borrows this idea, imagine a game where you have an animal "sidekick" that you have to work with and protect at all times.. it starts as an egg, which you carry around with you.. then it will hatch into a baby (dinosaur?), if you manage to survive long enough it will grow and start to learn (maybe you could teach it combat skills or it will learn from you?). It would get stronger as it got older too. -each stage of development would be linked to different gameplay elements, ie. the puzzles / obstacles / combat at the start (where it is an egg that you have to carry) would be different to that in later stages. (And you'd have to work together at times etc, tell it what to do, there'd be times when it would rescue you.. other times when you'd rescue it etc.)

If you allow both cute, and ferocious animals, and the opportunity to battle, and earn points otherway, you may tap both the male and female market. However, this sounds like an extension of those key-chain pets that grew old pretty quickly about 3 or 4 years ago.

You have to watch that it doesn''t become a tedious game like The Sims Online (at least when it was released- haven''t played since beta). And it shouldn''t turn into Pokémon either. I''m wondering how long before they create a MMORPG with Pokémon. Even though their US height was probably a few years ago, a MMO game from that would probably sell.