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Posted
Jul 25 2008, 12:43 AM
Neither fish nor fowl.
That is the predicament that E3 now finds itself in as the dust settles from last week’s summit. There was a palpable sense of frustration at the structure and logistics from all participants, from publishers like ourselves to the working press and financial analysts. Soulless and lacking an epicenter, the fragmented layout gave no indication whatsoever that we are the fastest growing entertainment medium in the world. While I am not sure I want to revert back to the old days of excess and one-upmanship, I do know that this format isn’t working…
Looking ahead to the future of E3, here’s what I do know:
• We’re confident that we can work with the ESA to make this right. There are important meetings ahead that we think will be substantive and be productive in finding the right path forward.
• Let’s invite the community. With the right planning, involving our biggest fans in E3 would bring back some of the raw passion the event has lost.
Whether it’s E3, or whether it’s in our forums, my belief is bringing in the fans helps us to create better games and bring new ideas to the market. On the
EA SPORTS World forums, our producers are now regularly interacting with consumers – our games are better for it, and it improves the fan experience. We’d love it if every game was perfect, but in all my years in the industry I’ve never seen a game with zero bugs. Because of the fans, we’ve already addressed a handful of issues in NCAA Football and NASCAR, and if we can create an environment to continue to get our games in the hands of you, our fans, sooner, then I’m all for it.
Cheers,
Peter
P.S. Random thought – do you think we might have to do a running change on the Madden packaging this year??
Posted
Jun 12 2008, 01:32 AM
I don’t know about you, but I’ve been captivated by the NBA Finals this year in a way that I haven’t been in years. There’s no Cinderella teams this year, no surprises. The Celtics and Lakers are the two best teams in the league, period, and both playing at their peaks. Even the best players are going to have their ups and downs in a seven game series (Kobe in Game 1, Pierce in Game 3), but what you see in basketball in perhaps more than any other sport is how hard it can be being number 1. I marvel at how Kobe and Pierce can consistently handle the double and triple teams, the constant pressure defense and the scrutiny. Yet, when all eyes are on them and expectations are at a climax they continue to deliver. It also underscores the importance of home court advantage. Whether it is the proximity of the fans to the action or the controlled indoor environment, it always seems to me that playing at home is a greater advantage in basketball than just about any other sport…particularly in the playoffs.
As any business does, we’ve been completing our annual performance reviews the past few weeks as well as setting objectives and strategic priorities for the year ahead. I find sports always serve as a great metaphor, and so as I was watching the game last night and reviewing our upcoming plans, I thought about what it takes to be on top, to stay on top and to constantly be in the crosshairs of the rest of your industry.
Some people don’t like the heat. I actually love it, and it’s been inspiring for me to see that our teams here do as well. Our teams are talented, passionate and motivated. It’s a changing marketplace and they’re responding to the demands of our consumers by developing some incredible products for the season ahead. You’d expect nothing less from EA SPORTS, especially when you look at the successes of 2007. To set the record VERY straight (despite what you might have read to the contrary in the last day or so…), we had:
• Four EA SPORTS titles get Sports Game of the Year nods by various outlets, including FIFA, NCAA Football, Madden and NHL. Of course NHL was consensus best in class, as I mentioned a few days ago. Named sports game of the year by seven publications. No one comes close to that.
• Three EA SPORTS titles in the overall industry top 20. It was a great year for videogames, and Madden was No. 1 in sports and No. 4 overall.
• Seven platinum titles (more than one million units sold).
I read the forums, I read your posts on my blog, and we do extensive research and testing to deliver the best sports games on the market each year. We care what you say, we respond as much as we possibly can, and so I’m not surprised that early NASCAR reviews are very positive and that our Madden and NCAA FB community event recently had folks applauding the efforts coming out of Tiburon (more on that to come, BP). I’m not surprised that NBA LIVE, which jumped 15 points in review scores a year ago, has the most ground-breaking feature from our lineup this year and we’ll unveil it next month at E3. And I’ll say with supreme confidence that the future couldn’t be brighter for two of our most critically acclaimed products from a year ago – FIFA and NHL.
We’re never satisfied. There’s always more we can do. It’s what we love about our business. I hate to sound like a cheerleader, but the facts are the facts. And I don’t expect them to change any time soon. We’re hitting this season in terms of quality and innovation stronger than we ever have at EA SPORTS. If I’m wrong, you’ll see me sporting a new tattoo - maybe a competitor’s logo?
Posted
May 05 2008, 10:52 PM
Last month, we had part 1 of a behind-the-scenes taste of life at EA Redwood Shores, where I am based full time. Last time, we looked at our player’s lounge, sports bar and more. This week, I wanted to take you around the rest of the campus here in Redwood Shores, including a look at the soccer pitch, basketball court and more.
Part 1
Part 2
As I’ve mentioned, our two main development studios are just outside of Vancouver (EA Canada) and in Orlando (Tiburon), and I’ll look forward to tours of those studios at some point as well.
Coming soon: more Q&A with our producers on
Tiger Woods PGA TOUR,
NASCAR,
NCAA Football and more.
Cheers,
Peter
Posted
Mar 14 2008, 09:17 PM
Greetings from Dana Point in Southern California, where I’m excited to have joined some
of the top minds in sports over the past few days at an event hosted by the
Sports Business Journal called World Congress of Sports. It is testament to the
power of sports video games that I could share the stage with key executives
from the NFL, NBA, FIFA, etc. and not feel that our industry doesn’t belong
here. There were some fascinating presentations, if you are interested in the business
of global sports. I’m perhaps even more excited to have landed in time on
Tuesday to have caught the 1-0 win by Liverpool over Inter Milan at the San
Siro to send them through to the quarter-finals of the Champion’s League.
Another great goal by Fernando Torres secured the win.
As promised, we’re finally up and running today with our new look and blog format. This is a little more pleasing to the eye, huh? We knew when we did our “beta” launch last month that we were a few weeks away from getting it exactly right, so
thanks for bearing with me, and still getting involved regardless of the somewhat clunky format.
As a neophyte blogger, there are a few things I’ve learned about the blogosphere
over the past few weeks:
- I love the feedback, regardless of how hard you are on me, the dev teams and our
titles. I’ll echo what I’ve already said
here, and that’s that it’s fun hearing from you and that your feedback is going
directly to those teams. That’s a big
reason why I wanted to even do this in the first place. And rest assured that with our migration to
this new format, all of the original posts and comments from the past month
remain in our forums.
- On the feedback, I can’t guarantee everything you suggest will get into the games
or that we even agree with it. I also
will never be able to answer all of your questions and respond to all your
comments. But I can promise you that
your feedback is valued and so starting this month I’m going to begin having
producers from our different game teams join me as guests where we’ll review
the top questions and comments from the blog.
Stay tuned for that…
- It has deepened my respect for the EA SPORTS brand that I have been proud to
inherit. Your passion and input for the titles is indicative of the
relationship so many of you have with the experiences we create for you, and
not unlike the relationship we have with our favorite teams. Some weeks you
love them, other weeks, not so much. My goal is provide you with a more
consistent and predictable quality experience with everything that we develop
for you…
What else is going on?
- This is the time of year when we have a lot of fun announcing our cover athletes.
Earlier this week, we
announced that Jeff Gordon will cover
NASCAR 09. While it’s hard to argue with that pick, that’s exactly what’s been happening in the final days of our contest to select the cover mascot for NCAA Football on the Wii.
The contest ends later today, and we have a close battle for the cover, with Washington State, Michigan State, Auburn, Nebraska and Central Florida making up the top 5.
I’ve been calling all my friends in the Bay Area all week to get them to vote for Cal…Who wouldn’t want to see Oski on the cover of a video game?
- I’ve seen speculation the past few days about the comments we’ve made recently about new IP coming this year from EA SPORTS.
While we’re still a couple of months away from any official new game announcements, I’m encouraged by the interest and excitement.
As I’ve said many times over the past few months, as EA SPORTS looks to expand our brand and capture new audiences, developing new intellectual property - such as
FaceBreaker and future unlicensed titles - will be a key component of that strategy. As an extension to those comments, and coming fresh out of our sku plan reviews of last week, I can tell you we now have EIGHT titles in development for the Wii, testament both to the global impact of that console currently in the global marketplace, as well as to our desire to attract more consumers to experience EA SPORTS games, no matter their experience playing games nor their prowess with a traditional controller.
- You all know I’m a huge baseball fan, and despite my current angst about Josh Beckett’s back spasms and Curt Schilling’s shoulder, I can’t wait for the regular season to get under way in a couple of weeks. So you can imagine that I was interested to see the new ads for MLB 2K8 last weekend on ESPN, as I was watching SportsCenter. Amusing spots to say the least. Any of you old-school EA SPORTS fans recognize anything there? Anybody remember Gimme?????
Hopefully you will all enjoy this new format, and look for us to take full advantage of
the multi-media opportunities it affords us over the coming weeks, with audio and video clips, interviews, and more links to breaking news from EA SPORTS.
Cheers,
Peter