Peter Moore on Madden in 3D, Motion Controllers, Games as Services and More

At the recent E3 show, IndustryGamers sat down with EA Sports President Peter Moore to get his take on 3D gaming (he's seen Madden in 3D already), the new motion controllers, the competing fitness games, and how EA Sports titles are evolving online and becoming services.

IndustryGamers: Let’s begin by talking about all the motion stuff since that’s a big theme of the show. You have Kinect from Microsoft and Move from Sony; you guys who do sports obviously are taking a very big interest in that.

Peter Moore: Sure.

IG: With all this emphasis on motion gaming, do you feel like, maybe, the more sort of traditional sports gaming is getting a little bit overlooked? There are a lot of hardcore gamers who just want to sit back on the couch and play...

PM: And we sell tens of millions of units of those games every year and motion control stuff certainly is getting the headlines and the publicity, but the bulk of the business, because of the zero install base on both Move and Kinect right now, will continue to be the core business of Xbox 360, PlayStation3, Wii. We are, as you know, as well, moving to other platforms, PC in innovative ways, with Tiger Woods Online, our FIFA online beta just went live, Facebook with FIFA Superstars... But motion controls are yet another platform that, to your point correctly, sports has a unique position to take advantage of. I guess I would summarize our position on that as we’re going to do that in a very prescriptive manner and look at the right experiences, the right platforms, because they're two certainly different experiences of having a controller in your hand and then using your body in the case of Kinect, and you know, as you saw with Andrew [Wilson, SVP Worldwide Development at EA Sports], we think golf is magical with Move as it was previously with Wii and we think interactive fitness with our EA Sports Active franchise is perfect for Kinect. And then we’ll experiment; we’ll continue to experiment as we go along.

IG: As a major third party publisher, you talk about the installed bases obviously have to be built up. Is that at all concerning to you? Are you worried that maybe the consumers aren’t going to rush out and buy the millions of Kinect or Move?

PM: Well, no, but you… like any forward thinking publisher, you need to be there; you need to be there in a smart way, but you need to be there at launch and support the platform holders and put your content behind it. Otherwise, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy if you’re not bringing your core franchises and core experiences to support the first-party initiative, then, you know, eventually they need great content. They’ll do what they can with their own first-party, but you also need people like us to support, and that’s exactly what we’re doing. In the case of Move, I think the pricing announcement yesterday seemed like competitive pricing for the experience. We’ll see what the consumer [thinks], because it’s the consumer that counts, and of course we’re still waiting to hear from Microsoft on what Kinect will be.

IG: Does that surprise you, that we haven’t heard pricing?

PM: Eh, it’s their business. They must have a rationale for that. And I’m sure they’re still… my assumption would be that they’re probably gauging. That’s what a show like this is for, is gauging interest and figuring out where they’re at. But we’re going to be there. When they’re ready, we’re going to be there particularly with EA Sports Active, which is a powerful franchise, and we’ll be right there with them, and we’ll be there when PlayStation Move is ready to go; you’ll see Tiger ready to go.

IG: So when you look at the entire motion space and you have all three platform holders involved, obviously the Wii has been leading motion because they were there at the start, that’s what the Wii is all about. But from your perspective, how does it break down? Do you see any one of the three necessarily having an advantage over the other?

PM: No, I think they’re different experiences. Look at us right now on the Wii. So you’ve got some very unique experiences we’re delivering. Last year, we were bundled with Wii MotionPlus because Nintendo, great partners with us there, saw Tiger as a unique, perfect example to have Wii MotionPlus, and the movement of the wrist now, that extra level of sensitivity gives you. NHL Slapshot, if you haven’t seen that, perfect for the Wii. We’ve managed to be able to embed the Wii remote in a hockey stick. We demoed that on the stage yesterday. And then you look at our continuing success with EA Sports Active, taking away the need for the neoprene strap and bringing accelerometers, and biometrics with heart rate monitor on the Wii. And then NBA Jam: perfect, perfect franchise to bring back onto the Wii with the ability to…. boom-shacka-lacka with the controller. So we’re learning very, very quickly over the last few years what we need to bring to each platform. You’ll recall with the Wii we were trying everything and looking at different art styles and different game mechanics and I think we’ve really narrowed down on what’s going to be effective and what isn’t.

IG: You mentioned Active; I’m curious what your thoughts are on the competition. I think just from talking with some other people, some of my colleagues, there seems to be a little bit more favorable impression with Ubisoft’s Your Shape.

PM: Yeah, I have to admit to you, I haven’t seen it. I didn’t get to the Microsoft press conference. I’m always finding it very interesting. I don’t know whether people tried it first and then tried ours. I know they don’t have biometrics, they don’t have accelerometers built in, so you know… early days for me, if I get the opportunity at the show, I’ll go have a look at it and go see my friends at Ubisoft. But I’ll look at that feedback, but only if it’s somebody that says, “I put the accelerometers on and I put the heart rate monitor on from EA Sports Active and I compared the two.”

PR person: Yeah, and I think you should check it out, definitely. And the other thing is, Peter said the biometrics is the big thing, but the second thing you’re not going to see anywhere at all, or to the level of sophistication, is the online experience. It’s very good online. The thing that Nike and Apple really revolutionized with Nike Plus creating that community and being able to take your workout experience, it’s fine to track all of that in your shoes. It’s what happens when you take it online. We’re putting a heart rate monitor so you can understand the fitness benefit as you’re working out and take it all online, which are two things we have not seen anyone else do.

PM: So, yeah, I’m sure Ubisoft are a great company and they’ve got great [products], and we welcome [them]; it’s a rising tide that’s going to lift all boats. And, you know, we’ve got a core franchise that’s already sold three million units. I don’t think they did that well with Your Shape previously. And from my understanding this is an exclusive to Kinect. We’ve managed to find a way that we’ve got a franchise now that is on every platform.

IG: I was a little surprised that at the conference there wasn’t more focus on the new NBA Elite; you’ve rebranded and considering that the Lakers are playing the Finals all this week it seemed like a good time to show your game. And also with the World Cup going on I thought you would maybe want to spotlight FIFA a bit more.

PM: Well, FIFA will be [demoed] on live stage [at our booth]. And NBA Elite is behind closed doors... we deliberately put it behind closed doors so we can give people deeper dives. We really need to explain the physics that we’re building in there, the hands-on control … you’ve got a producer that stands right next to you and talks you through it. It really is worth spending a little bit of time with it. But we wanted to focus on a number of core titles and we have so much in our portfolio. Also, and I think you’re going to be hearing [PR's] strategy on Elite is, we need to have an uncluttered environment talking about it. So it won’t be too long after the show you’re going to be hearing a lot more about NBA Elite.