On Friday, IndustryGamers was given the opportunity to have a lengthy pre-E3 phone conversation with EA CEO John Riccitiello. We picked JR's brain on next week's big Expo, how the publisher is evolving its strategy, the Online Pass, EA's thoughts on 3D gaming and much more. As you might expect, the EA boss was incredibly enthusiastic about his own company's portfolio and what they'll have on display at E3. Check out the full Q&A below.
IndustryGamers: With E3 right around the corner, I wanted to start with a couple of questions there. Obviously, I don’t expect you to divulge all the plans, but I’m assuming that the big three console makers probably have shared a lot of their information with the leading publishers such as EA in advance. I guess from a more general perspective, what are you most looking forward to at E3? Is there something that particularly excites you from Microsoft, Sony, or Nintendo? How do you see it?
John Riccitiello: Um… look, I’m always more excited about software than hardware. So, I think I increasingly feel in a weird sort of way that we’re almost post-hardware. I’m a gamer on Wii, PS3, Xbox 360, I play a lot on PC, um…. I’m definitely going to play a fair amount on iPad, iPhones, and once I get my account set up on this Android phone, it’s going to be part of my portfolio. I play FIFA Superstars among other things on Facebook. I’m always interested in seeing what great creators have created. I’m really proud of the titles that we’re going to be showing at E3. They’re very, very strong, high quality. I think we’re leading out with titles that sort of let you experience that same IP in so many different ways, on all the platforms I’ve just mentioned, like FIFA or Need For Speed, or Medal of Honor. You know, living on so many platforms that allow the consumer to access it from just about anywhere, anytime. I’m always interested to see what some of our competitors or some of the independent developers are going to bring to market. I already know what Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo are going to do, and that’s all really, really good stuff, but if you’re asking what I’m personally excited about, it’s the reception that some of our games… we’ll learn from the reception some of our games get at E3. And I’m going to learn from looking and picking up and getting hands-on time with some games I haven’t seen yet from our competition. See where the market’s going.
IG: Right. Are there some big surprises in store for us at E3 from Electronic Arts? Is there a triple-A title or some major franchise that has not been announced yet that you guys are planning to reveal at the show?
JR: Generally, I don’t announce the titles I’m going to announce at E3 beforehand.
IG: Right. (laughter)
JR: The PR guys would shoot an arrow in the back of my head. I’ll tell you some things I’m excited about at E3: One of them is the fact that MOH, Medal of Honor, is coming back so strong. In many ways, I feel like we invented the sector with Medal of Honor. Steven Spielberg invented it. Steven’s the guy that originally designed the game with us. It’s a great franchise. We spent three years reworking this one and it’s going to be big and people are going to really like what they see and I’m sure you’ve seen the trailers and things for it. I think that’s going to be very important.
I think people are going to be surprised. I and many others claim that they're one-tour Madden players; Madden is still going to be one of the biggest games of the industry this year, but there’s lots of lapsed players. It took sixty to sixty-five minutes to get through a game, which was more time commitment than people had. The whole game flow thing that changed fundamentally the way you worked with a game; you can finish a game in you know fifteen, seventeen minutes. It’s just way more intuitive; it’s like a professional football game. You set up your game book, you play off that… It frankly feels like an action game now as opposed to the start and stop that we used to have. We sort of defined the genre, and I’m really happy to have such fundamental innovation on a product that’s, you know, through its twenty-plus anniversary, so that’s a really big deal.
I’m personally a nut about Dead Space. Rare is it for me to finish a game on more than one platform, but I did in the case of Dead Space, and Dead Space 2 is more than a worthy sequel; it’s going to be a monster. So I’m really, really pleased with that. It’s got some really innovative online gameplay and... frankly, what made our lead character so interesting to begin with… it seems like everyone’s been Duke Nukem since the beginning of time, you know? Give me a bigger gun and I’ll march my way through. I think that that’s the way people have been building Bond games and most FPS games. What Dead Space does is it’s a thinking man’s game in addition to being a great action adventure title. So, we get the action in the game, lot of shooting, really different weapons…I love the puzzles. I love that to conquer this game you have to use your brain. One of our partners [Valve] built a game that I liked that did something very similar, which was Portal. You see you really have to think about the game; I like that kind of stuff. I really hope that at E3 everybody shares our enthusiasm, my personal enthusiasm.
I think one that’s going to really surprise people, but you’re going to have to get in behind closed doors to see it, is NBA Elite. People don’t change game engines on sports titles or sequel titles in-cycle. This is a brand new game and it’s a leap forward in basketball. I think it’s going to surprise people. I was up in Vancouver – I played it yesterday for about a half an hour – it’s a kick and a half. It’s a different way to play. It’s fun to see the industry innovate in the middle of a cycle in such a fundamental way in terms of how it works. I’d describe more about that, but we’re sort of embargoed on that until E3. But it’s really different.
[Epic's] Bulletstorm is just… I don’t know how to describe it; the title pretty much covers it. If you’re just looking to have a happy day, shooting anything that pops up, this sort of does it for ya. And that may sound a little bit gratuitous and obnoxious in today’s world, but sometimes it’s deeply satisfying to shoot sh*t. (Laughter) Bulletstorm does that better than almost anything.
A tour de force on the graphics side is going to be Crysis. The Crytek guys… I don’t know how they do it. It seems they get more out of a pixel than anybody that’s ever been in the game industry. Their pixels are somehow 3D or something. The game is just gorgeous to look at. I have to admit that I’m not entirely over eye candy; I still like that. It’s just a gorgeous piece of software.
One of my personal favorites is the way we’re integrating the full online, you know, different way than it’s ever been brought together in a game inside Need For Speed. It feels like you’re inside of a social network playing a driving game with a lot of other people in the game at the same time. It sort of pushes the wall back a little bit in a way that we haven’t been able to do before in video games. Very pleased with that. You know there’s a lot more I can talk about, but for us it’s going to be a good show.
IG: Right. I would expect a software publisher to say that software is the driving force, but we had an interesting opinion piece written by Jesse Divnich of EEDAR, and he believes this E3 is sort of a crucial show, possibly the most important in the history of the industry, simply because of the trending we’ve seen on the retail side and how we are sort of mid-cycle and Project Natal and PlayStation Move are, you know, supposedly going to reinvigorate the market; he sees this as a sort of crossroads for the industry. Do you view this show and the reception to these technologies in that same light? Is it that critically important for the industry to have a huge E3?
JR: How do you politely say you think that opinion piece is full of it? (Laughter) Um… is there a nice way to do that? Let me start with something. In 2003 there were 200 million people playing games around the world. 2009 there was 1.2 billion. 2003, the industry was under $20 billion, 2009, the industry’s over $40 billion. Yes, there was a little bit less that went through retail stores last year in North America than went through the year before, but every other form of gaming was off the charts. I think we’re going to see up and down years. Remember, the NPD doesn’t even capture second sale, and if you included that in the consumer’s perspective, they probably spent more on even packaged goods than they did the year before. So, if you want to look at this through the unique lens of what sells through four U.S. Retailers – first sales packaged goods only, and exclude everything else, fine. But that’s actually a really weird data point because that excludes everything that’s growing.
The other thing is you have to be also a little cognizant that… let’s use the PC in general. If you only look at retail data, the PC’s been in a 10-year decline. A 10-year decline. I mean last time I checked, Playfish makes games for the PC, so does Zynga. Last time I checked, World of Warcraft is played on PCs. Last time I checked, Pogo was a PC games service. So was Tiger Online. I mean, frankly, just those franchises alone are 2x the revenue of the total industry as reported by NPD.
So the fact is, the editorial seemed to be more about the way somebody happened to report a sub segment of the sub sector. So that’s why I don’t think it’s really all that big a deal... The turning point happened three years ago when the 200 million of us that had consoles invited the other billion to join the party. And we brought them in through new types of game services, new types of hardware. You know people said to me, “Aren’t you afraid that all this noise comes out with the iPhone, the iPad, the Android, and Facebook?” I point back and say those are all great game platforms. For each of those platforms... north of 50% of all that monetizes [on each of them] are gaming. Frankly, we’re seeing services like Netflix on Xbox; I think we’ll be lucky that they’re going to be 50% games – that’s a bad joke! Obviously, the lion's share is games. The point that I’m making is that I think the turning point was when people realized you could use a PC, a phone, a game service, or an online social service like Facebook, and they were all really just game platforms in disguise.
IG: Right. The other thing I wanted to get your opinion on is the whole 3D stereoscopic gaming trend. There was an article this week citing a few executives who basically said that the big story at this year’s E3 will actually not be PlayStation Move and Project Natal, but it will actually be 3D gaming. What is the EA perspective?
JR: Before I put that through the ringer, tell me who… before I put that freaking myth through the ringer, tell me who I’m dissing.
IG: (Laughter) I don’t remember the exact people, although I think [EA Sports boss] Peter Moore was quoted in there...
JR: Oh, sh*t! He has no idea what he’s talking about! (laughter) But that was a good response from you. That was quick.
IG: I’m just curious to see what you think about 3D, if that’s going to be the next revolution in this industry or not.
JR: First off, I will tell you that a great 3D game experience is a truly wonderful thing. I was playing a title we’ve got for fiscal 2012 in 3D yesterday up in Vancouver and it was definitely unbelievably cool. I think that before you see a revolution you have to have an army, and right now there’s like twelve people in America with 3D television sets, and they’re not exactly an army. (Laughter). So, the masses need to rise. The first thing you need for a large installed base is 3D televisions and 3D PCs. I think they’ll come over the course of the next two to three years in large numbers. Samsung and Sony are certainly putting a lot of weight behind that and you’ll see that play itself out. I don’t think it’s going to be a big story this year for games; some particular titles are going to play it out. I am a little nervous that some game companies will put out poorly authored 3D content, sort of just put it together, because look, all games, most nearly all games are 3D already. It doesn’t take that much to separate, you know, two and a half inches and sort of redraw the entire frame and have it run through any of the various polarization or the primary blinking system between the right and left eye. It’s quite a different thing to author it in such a way that the “Z-dimension,” the third dimension, is really well done. When it’s not really well done, it’s a new kind of headache that you haven’t ever experienced. So I’m actually a little afraid this year that we’re going to get less than well-authored content and it’s going to be one of those stories: video games give me a migraine. I think that over time, probably in the course of 2011, 2012, the strongest publishers will author some great content, the installed base will be there, and there will be a good positive growth spurt. I just don’t think it will be this year.
IG: On a related matter, I almost sort of separate this out, have you seen Nintendo’s 3DS personally? Have you actually had a chance? Have they given you access?
JR: It’s like one of these things here where with Nintendo where you’ve got to be very careful here because they’ve got a lot to say at E3, and I want to be careful to not accidentally transgress an NDA. I will tell you, I’ve seen it; it’s cool.
IG: OK, well, that’s good to hear. (Laughter)
PR person: Next question.
1 Comments
November 1, 2010
james i hope they dont treat you the way they messed me over and a lot of other people good luck