NowGamer has a quick chat with EA Sports' President, Peter Moore

NowGamer: Ever since you joined EA Sports, the quality of sports titles has increased year-on-year…
Peter Moore: [joking] All due to me. I go in, I write code…

Do you feel you’ve achieved all the initial goals you set out with?
No. When I joined the company, it had restructured the way it approached the world – we formed labels. So EA Sports, even though the brand has been around, it had never been structured as a label. We had five strategic pillars, which are still the strategic pillars we have today: globalise our business, digitise our business and our content, capture the core consumer, and, at the same time, captivate the masses and then expand our brand. Those are the five things, and I think if I aggregated all those things, I’d give us a B+. There’s still a lot of work to do, but we’ve made progress. I think the brand is in a better place, I think the quality – when you look at Metacritic, as something you can measure – that, year-on-year, has gone up. Then, of course, you look at the quality of the franchise. You look at NHL, which I’m sure you guys still get to play over here, even Madden, which is tough for us to grow, year-on-year, and NBA, all of which have gone up. We’ve added new intellectual properties – we’ve got Mixed Martial Arts this year, and we’ve made a very strong move into the interactive fitness business, so, yeah, there’s a bunch of stuff we’ve done well, but there’s more stuff we can do on top of that.

With regards to the future, how conscious are you of motion control and 3D technology?
Obviously, when you think about sports as a genre, [it’s something] that motion control will benefit from. We’ve got a lot of experience with the Wii, with Wii MotionPlus this year, as well as Tiger Woods and Grand Slam Tennis; sports have a lot to offer motion control. 3D, you know, everyone asks me about it, and I’m excited as a consumer. We talk about what 3D just did for moviegoing with Avatar. If you go see it, you have a perspective of what 3D should be – not cheesy, reach-out-and-grab stuff, but really get you half a step closer to the experience. And you know, you can relate to how high-def was used in sports, how it changed the way we watch television. It’s very difficult to watch something in standard definition. I think sports will have a role to play in this. Are we doing anything? Not yet, but clearly you’re seeing – as I’ve seen – how important it is to Sony in particular, and you just think that, you know, we will play a role when we figure out what role it is we should be playing.

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