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EA - Peter Moore thinks Wii u two-screen mentality is 'a big deal', wishes 3DS the best
A portion of a WAToday interview with EA's Peter Moore...
WA: You recently reassured the market that you are fully onboard the Wii U with your key franchises. What are your developers finding most exciting about the Wii U?
PM: They're still working with the software development kits, Jason. And as always happens, Nintendo continues to deliver updates to the SDK, and we find cool and interesting things there. I think the broader element is the idea of a second screen, which is something that many of us do now. I don't know about you, but watching TV I find myself either sitting with my laptop doing emails or my iPad browsing the web while the TV is going on in front of me. I think I'm watching it, depending on what it is. Obviously if it's a sports event, then I'm giving it my full attention, but anything else and it's probably only getting 40 per cent of my attention and I'm pretending to my wife that I'm watching TV with her. But the second screen mentality, it's not only doing something different, but also every now and then you are watching TV and have a question and it's fascinating now to do enquiries and find out information about something that you are watching on the main screen using your second screen. I think the concept of a second screen that it being used in tandem and in parallel to what is going on the big screen is fascinating for us as gamers, we think that is a big deal. A lot of our games are built for calling plays or strategies that you can't see on the big screen.
WA: Have you been disappointed with the performance of the 3DS? What does Nintendo need to do?
PM: Well, to their credit I think they saw that they had a sell-through issue and they dropped their price. I think it's going to be an interesting test for them this Christmas, I think we're all hoping it will be a tremendous Christmas present. I think it is aimed at a younger consumer for the most part. We continue to look at it. We have FIFA coming out on it. We have Madden in the US on it. Like any device we wish it all the best and we will monitor it and watch the sell-throughs and if there are business opportunities to bring new content, different content, or bring some of our great brands there in the future on top of what we have already committed then we will certainly do that.
Full interview here (thanks Johnny4!)
WA: You recently reassured the market that you are fully onboard the Wii U with your key franchises. What are your developers finding most exciting about the Wii U?
PM: They're still working with the software development kits, Jason. And as always happens, Nintendo continues to deliver updates to the SDK, and we find cool and interesting things there. I think the broader element is the idea of a second screen, which is something that many of us do now. I don't know about you, but watching TV I find myself either sitting with my laptop doing emails or my iPad browsing the web while the TV is going on in front of me. I think I'm watching it, depending on what it is. Obviously if it's a sports event, then I'm giving it my full attention, but anything else and it's probably only getting 40 per cent of my attention and I'm pretending to my wife that I'm watching TV with her. But the second screen mentality, it's not only doing something different, but also every now and then you are watching TV and have a question and it's fascinating now to do enquiries and find out information about something that you are watching on the main screen using your second screen. I think the concept of a second screen that it being used in tandem and in parallel to what is going on the big screen is fascinating for us as gamers, we think that is a big deal. A lot of our games are built for calling plays or strategies that you can't see on the big screen.
WA: Have you been disappointed with the performance of the 3DS? What does Nintendo need to do?
PM: Well, to their credit I think they saw that they had a sell-through issue and they dropped their price. I think it's going to be an interesting test for them this Christmas, I think we're all hoping it will be a tremendous Christmas present. I think it is aimed at a younger consumer for the most part. We continue to look at it. We have FIFA coming out on it. We have Madden in the US on it. Like any device we wish it all the best and we will monitor it and watch the sell-throughs and if there are business opportunities to bring new content, different content, or bring some of our great brands there in the future on top of what we have already committed then we will certainly do that.