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Posted
Oct 29 2008, 12:05 AM
My apologies on the gap between posts - travel schedule is
heavy this time of year as we're deep in planning for some new projects you'll
be hearing more about soon. So I haven't
had chance to respond to some your comments and suggestions for a while. It's
great to see the volume of questions from EA SPORTS fans who are interested in
more in depth of information about our titles.
In the very near future we'll have some informative destinations where
fans can interact directly with development team members for all of our EA
SPORTS titles. More on that soon...
I do however want to make the point that is nigh impossible
for me to personally chase down answers to all of your questions, and to be
blunt that was not the intention of this blog. I expect our fans to be heard
though, and we have a full team of people working to address your concerns to
make your experience even better. But,
rest assured, I love reading the colorful banter and I will do my utmost to
direct you to the appropriate destinations where you can get the information
you are looking for...so keep the comments coming.
In the meantime, here are a couple of updates that address
some of the concerns mentioned above as we head into the weekend.
Hatch and a few
others have asked about "dirty disc errors" on NHL 09?
I'm happy to report that our NHL team has addressed the
dirty disc errors that were appearing on the Xbox 360 versions of the game in a
new patch coming soon. They've also
taken an already great playing game and made it better with some important game
play fixes.
I say this a lot, but we're all grateful in this industry
for the power of the online experience to not only be able to host millions of
games each day across the world, but we're also able to bring new game updates
post launch. No piece of software is
ever perfect and I know our teams are always hungry to address issues as
quickly as they can once a game has launched.
NHL 09 Producer David Littman has posted a blog that gives a
deep dive on all the work done in the PS3 and Xbox 360 patches. Click here to read the blog.
When will NBA LIVE be
"made fresh daily"?
With the NBA season now underway, we're excited to flip the
switch on one of our most breakthrough innovations of the year - Dynamic DNA in
NBA LIVE 09.
We couldn't start the service officially until all NBA teams
had begun their season. Now that they
have, keep an eye out for an update on EA
SPORTS World as we plan to push our first new stream of data today. The NBA LIVE dev team will be there to give
you all the latest details and help answer your questions.
Finally, I want to reiterate how much I love reading the
commentary. Sure, our goal is always for
it to be positive, but when it's not we also want to have a place you can go to
be heard and get answers.
I have three good recommendations:
-If you have an immediate
issue with getting some aspect of your game to work, we have teams of dedicated
EA SPORTS customer support agents available to address your concerns 24
hours a day. You can submit questions to the customer support team at http://support.ea.com any time, day or
night. Most emails get answered within 24 hours.
-If you'd prefer to talk to
someone rather than email, our customer support line is (650) 628-1001.
- We're also seeing exciting
growth on EA SPORTS World, where we're growing our producer blog content
and we have our community teams actively involved to respond to your
questions and concerns.
On a closing note, I was honored to be at Wembley Stadium
last Sunday to support the NFL in their second regular season game at that
wonderful venue. The game enjoyed much better weather and the contest was much
more entertaining than last year. The New Orleans Saints (without the services
of Reggie Bush) prevailed 37-32 over the San Diego Chargers, with 83,000 fans
being entertained by open and aggressive play from both sides. The game went
down to the final play, when Philip Rivers launched a Hail Mary into the end
zone, which if caught would have won them the game. Alas for Chargers fans, it
was not to be...
Earlier in the afternoon I was at Chelsea to see my Mighty
Reds end the Blues 86-game unbeaten home streak, and go clear at the top of the
Premiership. Long way to go yet, but feeling like this could be the year...
Posted
Oct 13 2008, 11:43 AM
I was delighted to be in attendance and present the game ball at the O2 Arena in London last night, where the New Jersey Nets squeaked past the Miami Heat 94-92 in what turned out to be a very entertaining game for the sold out crowd of nearly 19,000.
EA SPORTS is the proud primary sponsor of NBA Europe Live, with our goal to support the growth of the league outside of North America, and to help bring world-class basketball to Europe each October as part of the slate of pre-season games. I was fascinated to experience how knowledgeable the crowd was about the nuances of the game, and the organizing team did a great job of bringing a true NBA experience of sports-meets-entertainment to London, including courtside celebrities (Jay-Z), both sets of cheerleaders (a big hit with the crowd), and non-stop activities during the stoppages in play.
Here is a photo taken before the tip-off, proving that once and for all that not only can white men not jump, they even have real trouble standing comfortably on their tip-toes...
Posted
Oct 02 2008, 12:30 AM
As I brace myself for the opening of the MLB playoffs, and the Beckett-less Red Sox game against the Angels tonight, I just hope we can steal one from the Angels and get home to Boston and clinch a berth in the ALCS. You can’t fake good pitching, and I hope Lester and Dice K are up for the test in So Cal.
Speaking of faking, one of our competitors wants you to believe that hiring one person to subjectively update the rosters of the entire NBA spells innovation, but it sure feels like a knee-jerk reaction and one that is going to disappoint people who buy that game this year.
Dynamic DNA in NBA LIVE 09 is the most innovative feature I’ve seen in years in a sports videogame … to be clear, our partnership with Synergy Sports will revolutionize the entire sports category and usher in an era where sports games can evolve as the season evolves.
As you may have read in the
Operation Sports interview with Synergy CEO Garrick Barr or the
recent blog from NBA LIVE producer Sean O’Brien, this is a groundbreaking partnership and the results will be something 100 percent unique to NBA LIVE – authentic, real-world data used by NBA teams powering daily updates to player stats, player tendencies and team tendencies in our game. Wouldn’t it be interesting to meet the guy who thinks he alone can do the work Synergy does? That’s funny.
In other news, so much for the Madden jinx, huh? If only I had played Brett Favre, and his 6 TD passes, on my fantasy football team this past Sunday, instead of sitting him in favor of Trent Edwards.
Everton 0, Liverpool 2. Always good to own the city bragging rights. Back on track after the disappointment of the last week vs. Stoke City, thanks to El Nino...and as I type I have just watched the 3-1 victory over PSV Eindhoven, with Stevie G getting his 100th goal for the club via trademark sizzling free-kick, and Robbie Keane finally getting off the mark.
Pats are here at The ‘Stick on Sunday, and let’s hope Belichick has worked their rear ends off since the debacle against The Fish. I’ll be there, cheering for them in hostile territory...
Golden Bears hopes to win a miserable Pac-10 took a big blow with injuries to Jahvid Best and Rulon Davis. Arizona State at Strawberry Canyon this weekend – let’s hope we show up…
Posted
Sep 12 2008, 04:50 PM
Beauty has, and always will be, in the eyes of the beholder. Same scenario, I would posit, exists in the world of games. In the crowded marketplace that is game software in year three of the next-gen hardware cycle, “quality” becomes critical in the eyes of you the gamer, as well as the retail buyers and the games journalists around the world. We all generally point to independent aggregation sites like Metacritic or GameRankings to consolidate reviews and generate review scores by upon which, theoretically, we should all base our buying decisions. The ratings we have received for our titles from the gaming review sites over the last few months have been, for the very best part, outstanding, and I couldn’t be prouder of all of the talented individuals that work on our games.
Three months ago to the day , I guaranteed you’d see an unprecedented level of quality and innovation from our products this year. As we looked ahead to the busy season for EA SPORTS launches ahead, we talked about capturing our core with rich new innovations – many of which tap directly into the massive migration to online – while also bringing a level of approachability to our games. And we talked about doing all of it at a quality bar that would elevate the EA SPORTS experience to places we hadn’t been in many years.
With several of our biggest games now on store shelves and several more big launches ahead over the next two months, it’s time to say a quick thanks to our develop teams for delivering on my promise (you didn’t really want to see any new tattoos, did you?), as well as to our fans for their consistent dialogue and feedback on how we’re doing.
We’re not perfect, and we continue to address a handful of issues that have been raised over the past three months. But overall, we couldn’t be happier on a week when NHL 09 launches to the best scores we’ve seen in the current generation of consoles, Tiger and Madden are the most critically acclaimed Wii games on the market (all genres!), and Madden owns the top three spots on NPD and four of the top 10. I was quoted as calling it “vindication” earlier in the week when we announced our strong first three weeks of Madden sales, and I think that’s exactly right.
Let me repeat – our games are not perfect. None are. But we strive to deliver the very best sports game experience to you year in, year out. And this year, perhaps more than ever, the teams have done a *** fine job in delivering on that goal.
PS – Look for NBA Live 09 and FIFA 09 to continue these increases in quality when we launch them in a few weeks time…
Posted
Aug 25 2008, 05:52 PM
Just back from a good trip to Leipzig for the annual Games Convention. It was my first trip to this event and I was impressed by the scope and scale of the convention, and was also impressed how seamlessly it evolved from a trade event to a consumer extravaganza on the second day. A useful template for a future E3 maybe?
For EA SPORTS, the announcements we made in Leipzig were important examples of our commitment to globalizing our business and the priority our teams are placing on pushing innovation in the online, connected space. The response to both of our big pieces of news last week – that we have a tennis game in development at EAC, and that FIFA 09 will debut a new feature called adidas Live Season – is a testament to the opportunity we have to continue to evolve the EA SPORTS brand and become even more relevant to a new era of both sports fans and gamers alike.
Before either of us got out of town though, I had a chance to ask FIFA 09 Executive Producer Andrew Wilson a few questions about adidas Live Season. As you can imagine, the first question I got from many people was how Live Season was the same or different than Dynamic DNA in NBA LIVE. Here’s a little of what Andrew had to say:
Q: What exactly is adidas Live Season and how does it work?:
A: adidas Live Season is a new premium service for FIFA 09 PS3, Xbox 360 and PC that will update in-game player form each and every week. It will change the way real life is reflected in a football videogame forever. Our new service will run from the launch of the game to the end of the 08/09 season and is based on how real players performed in the most recent real-world matches. FIFA 09 will feel different every week throughout the entire season matching the weekly rhythm of football. That means that the actual form and strength of a player in the game is based on his real life performance. Believe me Peter, Liverpool will be as good in the game during the course of the season as in real life – or as bad….
Additionally, let me explain a couple more interesting points of Live Season:
The data that changes on a weekly basis is the form of a player. No other data will be changed weekly. We will however be making adjustments to the data with the ‘Day 1’ updates – meaning, updating player transfers and the resulting line-up changes – and the winter updates where necessary based on player performances.
On a weekly basis, players will be assigned a “player form” rating, which can be one of five ratings: bad, poor, neutral (no change), good, and excellent. For the four non-neutral form settings, we update a variety of that player’s attributes based on what position the player plays and what form setting they were assigned. Form is relative to how players are rated in our player database.
Q: Who actually is responsible for rating players and how does the system work?
A: We have a global football data experts network that works with us every year to make sure the FIFA franchise includes the most accurate player and team data. This same team of passionate experts monitor every player in the Live Season leagues to supply in-depth data each week.
Q: What happens if a player gets injured? Would he simply vanish from the game?
A: We thought a lot about that, but the players are so important to the game that we decided that we won’t take them out of the game altogether. If and when players are seriously injured, they may get a poor or bad form rating to reflect the fact they aren’t able to play up to their rating in the database. But we are not making players unavailable due to suspension or injury for the service this year.
Q: Not that I expect this from Liverpool, but what if my team is having a bad season and I’d prefer to not have the team reflecting real-world form?
A: It’s simple. You can always turn off Live Season. If Liverpool, for instance, is having a bad season you can reset the service and play with a much better Liverpool squad that was included in the game when you bought it. You can reset your squads back to the same way when you first opened the game. You can decide whether you want to play with the latest form, or with the default player database: offline and online. It’s your choice each time you play. But as a sportsman that you are I bet you would never reset it. With both Dynamic DNA in NBA LIVE as well as Live Season in FIFA, we’re finally able to create sports experiences that evolve with the season. It brings sports fans that much closer to the real-world of sports.
As I mentioned in my previous post, I am off to New York this week for the Tiger launch. I’ll bring all the news from the Big Apple, including some of the behind-the-scenes shots from the numerous events we have planned. BTW – we’re now well over 1 million views of the Tiger viral video on You Tube as of this morning...
Posted
Aug 20 2008, 05:24 PM
We’re off to a good start here at the Games Convention in Leipzig.
At our press conference that started the day, we made two important product announcements that address our strategies of globalizing our business and continuing to take advantage of online and the connected sports gaming experience.
For FIFA, we announced
adidas Live Season, a new premium service that will dynamically update player form in-game on a weekly basis. While different in execution and unique for FIFA, adidas Live Season is like Dynamic DNA in that we’re harnessing the power of online to bring the virtual world of sports games to life with real-world data. In both NBA LIVE and FIFA this year, connected consumers will enjoy the benefit of a game that evolves as the season evolves.
In real-world terms, this will allow you to track Liverpool’s inexorable march towards the Premier League Championship this season, as the form of each of the key players improves each week, while at the same time Manchester United collapses like the sub-prime mortgage market (says he, hopefully…).
I was also very excited to announce that we have a
new tennis game in development at EAC. Tennis is something we’ve looked at for some time now, and we think the time is right to capture the excitement of the sport and bring new innovation to the genre as we globalize our business. The tennis game will lead on the Wii and be the first EA SPORTS game to use the new MotionPlus accessory for the Wii Remote.
You’ll hear plenty more on both FIFA and tennis in the months to come…
Peter