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Posted
Aug 25 2009, 05:42 PM
I'm back from an excellent trip to GamesCom. Having shifted this year to Cologne, the organizers of this year's event and participating publishers and hardware manufacturers should be applauded for presenting such a compelling showcase for our medium. The combination of great games, big announcements and flawless logistics, complemented by a perfect August window, made for an event that certainly rivals E3 now as the most important milestone on the game industry calendar ... just ask any of the nearly 250,000 people who were in attendance (yes, this was a consumer event after trade-only on day one).
Aside from our demos and news around FIFA and EA SPORTS Active More Workouts at EA's Tuesday press briefing, the biggest headline of the show had to be from Sony. As I told a number of people last week, Sony's price drop is coming at the perfect time, it's great for gamers and I'm optimistic that it can mean very good things for us at EA SPORTS, where we know titles like Madden and NCAA Football have always had a very strong base of fans on Sony hardware.
Bottom line - this was a great inaugural effort from Cologne, and I left the show energized and optimistic, both for the industry, and for introducing EA SPORTS to more PS3 players.
As exciting as it was to see how popular FIFA was in Europe, I also watched with delight as reports came in about Madden's success out of the gate in North America. Madden has its highest critical acclaim in five years, and online engagement continues to show extraordinary growth year over year within EA SPORTS games. In the first weekend alone, Madden became our first title to ever hit 100,000 peak simultaneous users - nearly 10,000 more people than can fit in the NFL's largest stadium. And...more than 5.6 million online games were played during the opening week; the equivalent of over 21,000 NFL regular seasons!
While we are still cautious about worldwide economic conditions, this type of continued growth in our online experiences makes us feel very strong about where we're placing our bets right now in development and as a business and it makes us optimistic with the trends we're seeing with Madden.
Congrats to our passionate and hard-working team at Tiburon who should be applauded for listening to Madden Nation and delivering the product fans have been begging for.
Before I go, two final items on GamesCom:
*If you missed the video we released last week, please check it out here then go to the poll on Football World and let us know what you're most excited about with the new game.
*We were happy to welcome World Heavyweight Boxing Champion Wladimir Klitschko to our booth during the show. I was delighted to see how big a fan he is of our industry and of Fight Night Round 4.
Posted
Aug 18 2009, 07:17 AM
After a busy week in the UK, culminating in the Edinburgh Interactive Festival, I returned home to San Francisco for the weekend to support our latest announcement regarding EA SPORTS MMA. And what a blockbuster announcement it was, welcoming 5-time World Champion Randy Couture to the growing roster of fighters that will be featured in the game, which will ship in 2010. Hot on the heels of our recent announcement of Fedor Emelianenko,
Randy's addition to the team gives us two of the greatest fighters in the sport today, and a solid platform upon which we will continue to attract more of MMA's best talent, thus furthering our goal of growing the sport through marketing investment and the creation of a world-class game experience.
That evening I was thrilled to be able to attend the Strikeforce event at the HP Pavilion in San Jose, of which we were a co-sponsor and had three fighters on the card wearing EA SPORTS branding on their shorts. There were particularly impressive outings from Gegard Mousasi and Gilbert Melendez, but of course the main event was the bout between Gina Carano and Cris "Cyborg" Santos. Much to the disappointment of a passionate crowd, the fight didn't get out of the first round, as Cyborg overpowered Gina from the opening bell...
I am now back in Europe, having just finished my section of the EA press conference here at GamesCom in Cologne. Dave Rutter, producer on FIFA 10, showed the latest developments on the title as we ready for the October launch. Just to make sure I wasn't suffering from any lingering effects of jet lag, Olympic Gold Medalist and 4-time World Champion Figure Skater Katarina Witt put me through my paces on EA SPORTS Active More Workouts, the latest iteration of our top-selling interactive fitness product for the Wii...
Finally, it was a disappointing weekend for me sports-wise, with Liverpool getting off to a dismal start to the new EPL season with a loss to Tottenham Hotspur with a lackluster display that only served to underline how weak our squad now is with the loss of Xabi Alonso. To add to the misery, the Red Sox slipped out of the lead in the AL Wild Card race with a series loss to the Texas Rangers, looking almost disinterested in the process...
Will post latest updates from Cologne as the week develops.