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EA talks digital gaming, the console process and looking forward to Wii U
A portion of an MCV interview with EA's Peter Moore...
MCV: Console releases also, by their very nature demand the involvement of the format-holder.
PM: Yep, and with a Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo you need devkits, and lots of planning. You sit down with Mr Xbox and explain your game, and then plan a launch window, maybe get some marketing support and secure their approval. Those businesses are very good at that, but it’s just not a part of the story in social/mobile.
MCV: Is that why EA has invested so much in its platform-agnostic digital platforms?
PM: Here’s our thinking: for many gamers, a month from the release of a game, they will move on. I will move on and look for something else. The key is that we have to move you on, learn about you, and move you on to something of ours. And it might be something completely different of ours. If you crank up Bejeweled for instance, we do a lot of in-game recommendations from our internal network. ‘Would you like to play Plants vs Zombies?’ And we have the biggest internal network to do that, and recommendation algorithms to do that, to ensure that people keep playing every day, and that they keep playing our stuff.
MCV: Are the console manufacturers ready for that approach?
PM: I don’t know if they are ready for that with free-to-play, but they are all very intelligent people, and they are all gamers, so they can see it happening. So we are looking forward to Wii U, and then our friends at Sony and Microsoft will at one point be talking about the future and we look forward to learning more with them.
The future is billions of people playing games, a lot of it is direct to consumer, and they will be playing games that last 60 seconds to 60 hours, costing from free to $60. I could play Mass Effect, or go and play Bejeweled Blitz briefly while I wait for the kettle to boil.
Full interview here
MCV: Console releases also, by their very nature demand the involvement of the format-holder.
PM: Yep, and with a Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo you need devkits, and lots of planning. You sit down with Mr Xbox and explain your game, and then plan a launch window, maybe get some marketing support and secure their approval. Those businesses are very good at that, but it’s just not a part of the story in social/mobile.
MCV: Is that why EA has invested so much in its platform-agnostic digital platforms?
PM: Here’s our thinking: for many gamers, a month from the release of a game, they will move on. I will move on and look for something else. The key is that we have to move you on, learn about you, and move you on to something of ours. And it might be something completely different of ours. If you crank up Bejeweled for instance, we do a lot of in-game recommendations from our internal network. ‘Would you like to play Plants vs Zombies?’ And we have the biggest internal network to do that, and recommendation algorithms to do that, to ensure that people keep playing every day, and that they keep playing our stuff.
MCV: Are the console manufacturers ready for that approach?
PM: I don’t know if they are ready for that with free-to-play, but they are all very intelligent people, and they are all gamers, so they can see it happening. So we are looking forward to Wii U, and then our friends at Sony and Microsoft will at one point be talking about the future and we look forward to learning more with them.
The future is billions of people playing games, a lot of it is direct to consumer, and they will be playing games that last 60 seconds to 60 hours, costing from free to $60. I could play Mass Effect, or go and play Bejeweled Blitz briefly while I wait for the kettle to boil.