VIDEO games designers in the region are in talks about multi-million pound deals for new products after a successful trade mission to the US, writes Dan Jenkins.

Atomic Planet, which employs 40 staff in Middlesbrough, was one of five North-East firms to attend the e3 conference, in Los Angeles.

Operations director Jason Falcus said: "We have at least 50 leads to follow up.

"Five of those were particularly positive and have developed pretty quickly - and one is a million-dollar contract.

"If one of them alone comes off, it will have been more than worth going."

The company is working on a number of projects, including a collection of classic Taito arcade games for the Microsoft X-box and PlayStation 2.

Atomic Planet was part of a North-East delegation organised by GameHorizon, which is a division of Codeworks, the North-East Centre of Digital Excellence.

Atomic's smaller neighbour on Teesside, Onisoft, which was also part of the delegation, reported similar successes.

It received good feedback about a dance mat game, which was tried out last week by Prince Andrew during his visit to Teesside.

Mark South, of Onisoft, said: "With this kind of deal, we would have to get the game finished by September to get it on the shelves by Christmas."

The company, which employs nine staff, has also signed a £1.2m contract to deliver a game for a hand-held console manufacturer.

Tyneside companies Mere Mortals and Pitbull Syndicate also attended e3 through GameHorizon.

Simon King, Codeworks head of sector development, said: "It is too early to put a figure on it, but we would be surprised if deals worth several million pounds were not announced in the next six months."

The biggest games convention in the world, e3 saw the launch of 11,000 titles and was attended by 70,000 people.

"Billions of dollars of business is done at e3," said Mr King.

"A big game used to cost $7m. Now you are looking at $20m.

"It was a key place to be at a key time, to stake a claim to part of the global games industry.

"It is a tough industry and it is getting tougher. We took a range of companies, whose work stood up to the best that was there."

The industry's three major console manufacturers are each about to launch a new generation of games machines.

The Microsoft Xbox 360 will be out this year, followed in the middle of next year by the Sony PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's follow-up to the GameCube, presently dubbed the Revolution.

"The break-point has come in terms of the industry stepping up a gear," said Mr King.

"We left e3 feeling that we had seen North-East companies in the perspective of the global marketplace, and they had done us proud."