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Posted
Jul 14 2009, 07:37 AM
It’s been a busy few weeks, but we’re excited for another big launch week here with NCAA Football hitting stores tomorrow.
We’ve talked a lot lately about our products as live services, with new content and ongoing support after launch … NCAA Football is a great example of how that live support is quickly evolving to mean functionality both post and pre ship. Consider this – we announced TeamBuilder, the new create-a-school online feature, last month at E3 as something that would allow fans to create content for NCAA Football 10 before the game had even shipped. Now six weeks later, more than 160,000 teams have been created online and can be imported into the game beginning tomorrow. I’ve got to admit – that’s an eye-popping number.
I was excited to see the first NCAA Football review hit today, where TeamXbox calls it “the best football game I have ever played on an Xbox” in giving it a 93. Heady praise indeed, and having seen the final build last week in Tiburon, I think you will be in agreement that the development has once again captured the passion, commitment and excitement of college football.
More news and notes from the weekend:
• I find myself playing the beta of Tiger Online every opportunity that I get recently. The concept of playing Tiger straight from my web browser, and to be swinging the club 20 seconds after opening the site, is a blast. We are closing in on an open beta, and I will post a link to that as soon as the team is ready to scale.
• The news on Saturday of the death of former world champion boxer Arturo Gatti hit me particularly hard. He was a great friend of EA SPORTS, appearing in each of the last two editions of Fight Night, and as all boxing fans know, he had the heart of a lion in the ring. I had the pleasure of meeting him in Miami three years ago, and he spent a couple of hours with my daughter and I regaling us with stories of his upbringing, his pre-fight regimen, and fascinating anecdotes of his great fights against Micky Ward. You were a champion in and out of the ring, Arturo, and will be sorely missed by those of us here at EA SPORTS who had the honor and privilege of working with you over the years.
• Fk915 – yes I know the Ashes have started, and while it is impossible to watch the action over here in the US, I do follow the matches via BBC.com or Cricinfo.com. While England opened brightly on the first day, they ended up having to heroically hang on for the draw at the end. It seemed that the wicket was a bowlers nightmare at first, and while if I were the Aussie captain I might have declared an hour or two earlier, it came right down to the last wicket and what was undoubtedly a thrilling and nail biting last few overs.
• Fight Night Round 4 continues to garner critical acclaim, with scores that put it in the top 6 percent all time for all games on the PS3 and Xbox 360. For those of you that requested the option of the button controls, I am sure you saw our announcement last week that a download enabling this would be available by September. Having played a couple of hours over the weekend with my son alternating playing as Muhammad Ali and keeping Iron Mike Tyson at arm’s length, I am a confirmed sticks guy at this point, but I also recognize many of you want the option of the buttons as well. The development team is working on this, and we’ll get this to you as soon as we can…
• I also saw the first playable of EA SPORTS MMA while at Tiburon last week. We have a team of incredibly hardcore fans of the sport working hard and making excellent progress, and we look forward to delivering a title in 2010 that we believe will provide further focus and attention to the sport.
I know there has been some recent discussion about EA SPORTS bringing a challenger to this sport. I love mixed martial arts, and we’ve been working on a game concept since I came to EA two years ago. I have great respect for the organizations and individuals that have invested in the sport’s growth over the past decade – so this is one that is near and dear to me and I’m excited to see such good progress to date. I trace my MMA video game roots back to my support of Crave’s UFC title on the Dreamcast in 2000, and have been a fan ever since. Our title will bring both innovation and further authenticity to mixed martial arts, not to mention a strong global publishing network that will help spread the sport’s popularity around the world.
Finally, wish I could have been in Vancouver today for our big fall preview event. Media and community were joined by such stars as Venus Williams, Dwight Howard (Orlando Magic), Milan Lucic (Boston Bruins) and Sacha Kljestan (Chivas USA) for previews of NBA LIVE 10, FIFA 10, NHL 10 and Grand Slam Tennis. Our EASPORTS.com team was there to bring you everything from the event.
Posted
Jun 27 2009, 01:48 AM
Fighting was the theme of the week around here, with Fight Night Round 4 hitting stores on Thursday (one week early!) and still plenty of chatter on the boards about our recent MMA announcement. I’m pleased to see the anticipation already growing about what the Tiburon team has in the works for MMA next year – that’s going to be a fun one to bring to market, just as Fight Night Round 4 has been for us over the past several months as we’ve arrived at this week’s launch.
Considering the bar that Fight Night Round 3 set when ushering in this console generation in 2006 (I remember being on stage with Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer as they demoed the game at CES – we were very proud to have it on the Xbox 360), it’s been gratifying to see such strong critical acclaim so quickly out of the gate this year – including three perfect scores (AP, Playstation: The Official Magazine, G4) and more than a dozen reviews of 90 or above. Many of you know how much I love reading this stuff, and I have to hand it to OXM for delivering the best line I’ve read yet about FNR4: “Round 4 is a force that topples its mind-blowing predecessor in every category. You will get punched in the face, and you will love it.” Then of course there is the great quote from Level in the Czech Republic – “best game with half-naked men on the market!”. My congratulations to Dean Richards and his very talented team up in Vancouver – you’ve created an undisputed champion.
To celebrate the launch, we were lucky enough to have three boxers – Sergio “The Latin Snake” Mora, Robert “The Ghost” Guerrero and Andre Berto – come by EA headquarters here on Thursday to introduce the game to our employees.
All three of these guys are known for their grit and toughness in the ring, but they couldn’t have been any more polite and accommodating to the team who was anxious to meet them, ask questions and check out the game for the first time. One of the highlights must have been when Sergio went from a sparring session with his trainer to quoting Hemingway when doing Q&A (“first, one must endure…”) – quite a treat.
Hope you have a great weekend playing Fight Night. Once you’ve had some time on the sticks, let me know what you think. Maybe I’ll see you online…
I’ll be taking a break from FNR4 on Sunday to see if the US can pull off the ultimate upset by beating Brazil in the Confederation’s Cup Final in South Africa – C’mon Sam’s Army!
Peter
Posted
Jun 10 2009, 11:07 AM
I'm back from a great week at E3 in Los Angeles and pleased to see the feedback we got on our product lineup at the show. As you might have seen this week, Madden NFL 10 won The Technical Achievement - Software Award from G4 and Sports Game of the Show 1Up. Fight Night Round 4 also received Best Sports Game of the Show from G4.
We went from workouts to tap-outs last Monday at EA's press conference - with news about EA SPORTS Active, a great live demo of Fight Night Round 4, and of course the announcement of EA SPORTS MMA in development at Tiburon. With top fighters and fighting styles from around the world, and our typical authenticity to the real sport, I'm telling you this will be the most intense MMA game to date.
It was also quite a thrill to spend time with Pete Sampras as part of our Grand Slam Tennis demo. Pete was a blast onstage, and even more fun down in the Green Room, where he and Alison Sweeney battled it out on Grand Slam Tennis for a good hour before the show started. Once Pistol Pete got the hang of the Wii Motion Plus controls, that serve and volley game kicked in for him just like the old days...
When you add in our announcements of TeamBuilder in NCAA Football (which has now spawned more than 55,000 created teams since last Monday) and Online Franchise in Madden, I think you got a good sense why I'm so excited about this year's new games and think fans will share my optimism when they get their hands on our new titles over the coming months. And of course we're off to a great start with the recent launch of EA SPORTS Active and this week's Grand Slam Tennis and Tiger Woods PGA TOUR launches. 2009 is shaping up to be a great year for EA SPORTS, driven in no small part by the feedback we receive from you our core customers.
Finally, I was glad to be a part of the "new and improved E3", a show that felt like it had the excitement of years past and provided a perfect platform for showcasing the great work of this industry without the unmanageable crowds and booths that had begun to overrun the show and left us with the underwhelming E3s of the past two years. Both Sony and Microsoft shared exciting news about their respective motion control technologies, something that we at EA SPORTS believe can be a major driving force towards mass market adoption.
Cheers,
Peter
Posted
Dec 05 2008, 06:15 PM
Last weekend was a
big one for boxing fans in Las Vegas, with Manny Pacquiao scoring an eight-round
TKO of Oscar De La Hoya. As much as I would have been interested to have seen
the fight, I didn't. But that's something promoter Bob Arum would like to
change. In a story in last week's LA Times ,
Arum says the future of boxing is getting it back on network television and away
from only being able to watch the sport on cable and pay per view. I am old
enough to remember when a championship fight at any weight was a really big deal
in the world of sports. I clearly remember listening to BBC radio as a kid to
the Cassius Clay fights, and then of course when he became Muhammad Ali and
fought those monumental battles against Frazier and Foreman. Those fights were
network TV primetime specials, and the sport got huge positive coverage as a
result. Sadly now we need to cough up $55 or so to see these fighters in action,
something so few people are willing or able to do in these difficult times.
While I hope one
day boxing does make a return to network TV, in the meantime the best place for
fighting fans to get their fix is our Fight Night franchise. I hope you'll all
be watching the Spike VGAs live this
Sunday, where I'll be joined by a special guest on stage to show the world
premiere of Fight Night Round 4. Fight Night Round 3 remains one of the most
critically and commercially successful games of this hardware generation, and
I'll never forget when I saw the first concept video of the game back more than
two years ago. On Sunday, you're going to see something never before seen in a
videogame. And next summer, I'm confident you'll see a game that will build on
the rich heritage of this great franchise.
A few weeks ago we
promised you more direct interaction with our development teams, particularly
when it comes to answering your specific product-focused questions (that would
be you Jack, dolly lama, Bee- $, etc.). Now on EA Sports World, we've got many
of our dev team pages up and running, with multiple producers from each game now
regularly interacting with fans and answering your questions, posting blogs
looking for your feedback on our games, and more.
Here are the first
few that you can now view on EA SPORTS World:
Madden dev team
page
NCAA Football dev
team page
FIFA dev team page
NBA Live Dev team
page
Not only can fans
now regularly communicate with our dev teams at the above pages, we also have a
full customer support team that can also answer customer service-related issues:
http://www.support.ea.com. So as I've said
before, we want to get this right and we've got a number of good options now in
place for you.
We want the
feedback. We listen to the feedback. And our teams are in position to listen
and react to much of you have to say. You be the judge.
Please let me know what you think. And are there other dev teams that do this
really well, either within EA or around the industry, that you'd like to see us
learn from?
On a related note,
"Jack" let me try to bury the socks/towels issue once and for all. I get it,
and understand what you feel the game needs to be more authentic. The dev teams
have seen the posts, and will discuss this issue at the aforementioned blog
soon .
Peace?
"Simon": No
announcements to make on cricket and rugby right now, but rest assured we are
keeping a very close eye on developments in both sports, particularly on the
Twenty20 format in cricket, that really seems to have invigorated the sport in
the past year. Stay tuned.
So don't forget to
tune in to the VGA's on 12/14 (9pm ET on Spike) when I will be premiering the
first look at Fight Night Round 4 (and I will have a special guest there to help
me out...)
Also, be sure to visit the official Fight Night Round 4 website for all of the latest news and videos of the game.
Posted
May 11 2008, 06:02 PM
Back home after a big week up in Vancouver. We hosted our first-ever EA SPORTS Season Opener, a showcase of most of our upcoming games for this year for media from all over the world. It was a great chance to give early looks at our new games to media who had come from near and far to get a taste of what they can see this year from EA SPORTS.
You may have read some of the news and game previews that have come out of the event over the past few days. A few things I wanted to highlight:
• I’ve mentioned a number of times that a real priority for us as the gaming industry evolves is diversifying our portfolio. We unveiled two new initiatives last week that I think we will do that.
o We announced a new sub-brand with games designed for a broad casual sports gaming audience. EA SPORTS Freestyle replaces EA SPORTS Big, and we plan to ship three new games in the next year under this brand. FaceBreaker, coming in September, will be the first. While no announcements have been made, I’m also very interested in the health and fitness space and think we can be a leader in this space. Afterall, I was a P.E. teacher years and years ago and am excited about what we could do here.
o We also announced an initiative for the Wii called “All-Play”. We’re designing five of our most popular franchises exclusively for the Wii this year and they’ll feature unique controls, unique modes, unique presentation, and unique packaging. All-Play is a much more all-encompassing design philosophy that expands significantly on last year’s Family Play control scheme in Madden, FIFA and NBA LIVE.
• Last Wednesday, we confirmed that Fight Night Round 4 is in development and slated to release in 2009. It was an honor to have three of boxing’s best at EAC to make the announcement. You’ll see below that Winky Wright, Lennox Lewis and Sugar Ray Leonard look more at home in the ring that I do, but it was sure fun listening to them talk about the sport and picking their brains for ideas for Fight Night. We obviously also listen to feedback from the fans on what you want to see in our games, and so we’re also excited to be bringing Mike Tyson back to videogame boxing for the first time in nearly a decade. That’s something fans have been begging for.
• I also had a chance to catch up with a number of our producers over the past week and remain really motivated by the great work that’s being done. After we had our first announcement about this year’s Tiger Woods game last week, we had some questions about some of the new features. So I caught up with Executive Producer Mike Taramykin and asked him to clarify a few things they have planned for this year. Click here to see what Mike had to say.
Cheers,
Peter
