Peter Moore Blog

Now It's a Fight

PeterMooreBlog — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 00:13:00 GMT

I hope you had a chance to watch some of the Strikeforce broadcast on CBS last Saturday night. It was proof-positive of the rising popularity of mixed martial arts that CBS gave a coveted primetime 9pm Saturday slot to the sport. The highlight of the card was of course Fedor Emelianenko and Brett Rogers, and the action certainly lived up to the advance billing, with Fedor eventually dispatching Rogers, but only after surviving an early cut nose and a spirited fight into the second round.

We're delighted to have announced that Strikeforce will be featured as a premier league in EA SPORTS MMA, and we used Saturday's big event as a chance to release our first gameplay video from the game. EA SPORTS MMA is making big strides in development at Tiburon and we're confident this is going to be one of the most anticipated games of 2010.

If you missed it, be sure to check out the new video here and let me know what you think.

FIFA in Japan

PeterMooreBlog — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:11:00 GMT

While at Microsoft, one of my responsibilities was oversight of the Japanese market. A fascinating country and culture, I thoroughly enjoyed my time over there. It is the cradle of our industry, and despite some recent ups and downs in the fortunes of Japanese developers and publishers, some of the most creative content in games still emanates from Tokyo and Kyoto.

Having said that, one of the frustrations of being an American company attempting to do business in Japan is the insularity of the industry that defends locally-made content and looks down on games from abroad. I appreciate this is a unique culture that has very different tastes in entertainment. But while western movies and music can be extremely popular with younger consumers, foreign-developed games (or yoge, as they are called) have an extremely difficult time breaking through with Japanese gamers. This has frustrated American and European publishers for decades.

In the past, we've pointed to things like genre preferences, game play mechanics and character art as issues in breaking through in this culture. But with simulation sports games, these issues would seem much less relevant - it's typically about the gameplay. So you can imagine my disappointment every year as we struggle to break through in Japan with our outstanding FIFA franchise (which, I should point out, is a game made by developers from more than 20 different countries, including Japan). This year's tour de force has been universally-acclaimed as the best iteration ever in the long history of the franchise, garnering a number of perfect scores from reviewers and averaging a metacritic score of 91. So imagine my delight to see Famitsu award the game a platinum rating (36/40), a score only enjoyed by the cream of the crop of games released in Japan. That score obviously caught soccer gamers eyes over there, as the game debuted in the top 10 this week, much to our delight.

Having said all of that, it is clear we still have work to do in Japan to more fully understand what drives that gamers attraction to sports titles. Let me be clear on this. I recognize that there are many factors that contribute to a gamer's decision to purchase (or not) a particular game, I'd just hate for the gamers in Japan to not get as much enjoyment as the rest of the world out of the best sports game of this console generation. Also, we'll continue to do our part to try to better understand the Japanese consumer - with market research, focus groups with gamers of all ages, and feedback sessions with journalists - and continue to improve on the best soccer game in the world.

Giving Back

PeterMooreBlog — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 02:41:00 GMT

Earlier this week, we made an announcement that may have barely even made your radar, but I think is extremely meaningful during National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. We have launched two initiatives that we hope in some small way will help support the goal of curing breast cancer.

- We've launched an exclusive breast cancer awareness apparel package for EA SPORTS Complex on PlayStation Home. The limited edition apparel sells for $2, it will be available through November 11 and all proceeds will go to Drew Brees's Dream Foundation charity.

- Meanwhile, our EA SPORTS Active team has partnered with Susan G. Komen for The Cure to sponsor various Race for the Cure events around the United States this month and has launched a special edition EA SPORTS Active "Pink" package, available throughout October.

As someone who has been personally impacted by this terrible disease, I would urge all of us to learn more about how we can help contribute to learning more about early detection and treatment. Go to www.komen.org for more information.

I thought of both of these initiatives this past Tuesday night when I joined nearly a thousand others from our industry here in San Francisco for the annual Nite to Unite black tie event. While making and selling great games is our core mission in being a successful company, I'm also grateful to the people at EA and throughout the industry who recognize the need to give back, and in particular to children's causes. As a past co-chair of the event, I take great pride in what the industry has accomplished philanthropically over the past years.

For those of you not familiar with it, Nite to Unite - for Kids (NTU) is an annual dinner hosted by the ESA and supported by members of the association (companies like ourselves at EA and other publishers and related companies) and the interactive entertainment industry to raise funds for the ESA Foundation, which helps to make a difference in the lives of America's kids. To date, NTU has raised more than $10 million benefiting various organizations, and from the look of the activity around the auctions this year, it seems like we will be adding handsomely to that amount with this year's contribution.

Both the work our teams are doing to support breast cancer awareness as well as the support shown across the industry for NTU are proud examples for an industry that is all-too-often the brunt of unfair and unwarranted criticism surrounding the supposed negative impact we have on the social lives of young people here in the US and around the world.

On a lighter note, we've been thrilled with the launch of FIFA in Europe and I'm obviously anxious to see how the North American launch goes next week (Nov. 20). As we have throughout this summer and early fall, we continue to learn a lot about the changing habits of EA SPORTS fans and their voracious appetite for online content - so much so that sometimes it threatens the integrity of our robust online servers. We asked "How Big Can Football Get?" throughout our FIFA 10 marketing campaign, and consumers in Europe quickly overwhelmed even our most optimistic projections, shattering online records that we had just set two months ago with Madden. We're thrilled with the interest and I'm glad our teams have solved many of the capacity issues that plagued some of you in the first few days out of the gate.

Heading to London next week to support the NFL's continued international expansion program. New England Patriots vs. Tampa Bay Buccaneers at Wembley. Go Pats!!!

Let's FIFA 10

PeterMooreBlog — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 19:10:00 GMT

As FIFA launched throughout Europe this week and hundreds of thousands of gamers began competing from London to Madrid, Barcelona to Frankfurt, I want to send my congratulations to our FIFA development and marketing teams in Vancouver and Geneva. In fact, I had a friendly little wager with FIFA producer Dave Rutter (the terms of which will remain between he and I) about rewarding the team if the game was above 90 for its average review scores on launch day...and here we are on October 2 with the highest rated sports game of this console generation at a 92...well done team.

It's always a challenge to improve on an already universally-acclaimed game, as was the case with FIFA 09, but the team at EAC continued to innovate and add polish to the jewel. I had the pleasure of meeting with them in Vancouver this past week, and passed on my thanks and admiration on behalf of all footie gamers from around the world.

We asked "How Big Can Football Get?" when we recently launched a brilliant new TV campaign in the UK, and we're all anxious to see the answer to that question over the coming weeks. I'd love to hear what you think of the game - please let me know. And for those of you in North America, you just have to wait a few more weeks to join in.

Should be an exciting sports weekend - today I'll be in Berkeley to see if the Cal Bears can rebound from an abysmal performance in Eugene when they host USC. If Kevin Riley can regain his confidence and complete some passes early, maybe we will be able to get Jahvid Best going and put the Trojans on the back foot. If not, we'll be hearing that annoying USC fight song all evening long... And on Sunday, Liverpool plays Chelsea. Up early to watch that one, and looking for my Mighty Reds to rebound from the poor showing in Florence in midweek. I'll actually be at Stamford Bridge, Chelsea's home stadium in London on Wednesday delivering a keynote address to executives from across the world of football, so let's hope they welcome me still if Liverpool takes the win. The speech focuses on how sports marketing is rapidly evolving, using FIFA 10 as a best practice case study.

I couldn't be more excited by how well NHL 10 has been received, the overwhelming interest in FIFA's big launch this week in Europe, and the quality of NBA LIVE, which hits stores next week here in North America ready to put up a fight against what is always stiff competition.

NFL Season Arrives

PeterMooreBlog — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 23:22:00 GMT

Titans or Steelers. What do you think? As interested as I am in tonight’s opener, I’m more worried right now about the Cardinals. I selected Larry Fitzgerald in the first round of my fantasy football draft Tuesday night, and then added Kurt Warner as my starting QB in the second. I guess I know who I’ll be rooting for this year (in addition to my beloved Pats).

Feels like just yesterday that I was watching Super Bowl XLIII, and here we are seven months later with another season upon us. Of course, we went on to put both Troy Polamalu and Larry Fitzgerald on the cover of Madden this year, and as the presenting sponsor of NFL Kickoff weekend, we couldn’t be more excited to see the start of the NFL season finally upon us.

Madden continues to bring in a record number of gamers competing online, we're very pleased with the great critical acclaim for a product we're quite proud of, and yesterday we expanded the franchise to the App Store for the first time. Now you can play Madden on your iPod touch and iPhone. It's Madden, so of course you have all the NFL players, teams and stadiums, along with full control over team depth charts, cross-team trading, modes like Play Now or Season, and John Madden coaching tips.

Hopefully you also saw that we've just re-launched EA SPORTS Football World (available in English, French and German) and also our new Game Face tool. It lets users upload photos of their face to EA SPORTS Football World and EA SPORTS.com to create their virtual likeness on the sites. Players can then download their Game Face to be their Virtual Pro in FIFA Soccer 10 like I did.

Game Face takes player creation to the next level in FIFA with unrivalled physical likeness and, in my case, makes my dream of playing for my Mighty Reds of Liverpool finally possible. And talking soccer, delighted to see England booking their tickets to South Africa with the surgical dismantling of Croatia this week (including two goals from Stevie G). Could this be the year??? 1966 is such a distant memory now...

Few other thoughts:

- Springboks - thanks for your posts about rugby. Right now, we have no plans to develop and publish a rugby game.

- Red Sox continue to splutter their way towards the play offs (hopefully). A season that started looking like we had more pitching than we knew what to do with is finishing with only Jon Lester as the only reliable arm in the rotation. Unfortunately, the Yankees look unstoppable this year...

9/9/99 Ten Years After

PeterMooreBlog — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 02:29:00 GMT

I trust my employers here at EA will allow me the indulgence of reminiscence and nostalgia on this day, 09/09/09, the 10th anniversary of the launch of the Dreamcast here in North America. It certainly doesn't feel like a decade has gone by since this innovative console ushered in the era of online gaming, albeit through a 56K modem, and thus changed the face of interactive entertainment forever. The memories of course are bittersweet - we all know how this movie ended - but I was fortunate to have worked at that time with some of the most amazingly dedicated individuals, all of whom were galvanized around a single goal : prove the naysayers wrong, launch the console with a bang, get to a meaningful installed base within the first twelve months, and keep the momentum going in the face of the upcoming stiff competition.

With the Dreamcast's online capabilities, we coined a phrase "We're taking gamers where gaming is going". In our heart of hearts, we worried that we would not be there for the entire journey, but it was with great pride that with our Sega Sports games in particular, that we ushered in the era of connected interactive entertainment. I don't think it is an overstatement to say that the Dreamcast and it's online network laid the ground for what we all take for granted today - online game play, linking innumerable gamers from around the world to play, compete and collaborate, as well as enabling new content to be delivered in addition to that which was delivered on the disc. As rudimentary as those first dial-up game play experiences were, we proved that it could be done, and that gamers were clamoring for competition that extended past whomever was sat next to you on the couch at the time.

Over the years, I have been asked many times whether EA's decision not to develop and publish games for the Dreamcast was a major contributing factor in its early demise. That we will never know. But it is hard to argue with EA's rationale at the time and the ultimate outcome - get in position for the impending arrival of the Playstation 2, deploying all resources against the newest version of Sony's already wildly successful video game platform. You can't argue with the results. EA came out of the blocks strongly in support of the PS2, and enjoyed tremendous success throughout the key years of that console's life cycle. If there was one irony to come out of this, it was necessity of investment in a sports label to bolster the Dreamcast lineup. Conventional wisdom in that period was that the first party should have a sports brand (Playstation had 989 Sports and Xbox would have XSN), and the Dreamcast was no exception. Thus was born Sega Sports 2K - named after the Y2K phenomenon that had us all paranoid that our computers were about to burst into flames on 01/01/00...

And what a launch line up we had. 18 titles was probably 3 or 4 too many, but we had all genres covered, featuring classics such as Soul Calibur, Sonic Aventure, NFL 2k and Ready 2 Rumble. All were brought to glorious 3-D life through the Power VR graphics chip. The "biggest 24 hours in retail entertainment history" occurred on 9/9/99, with day one sales totaling just under $98m To support this outstanding portfolio of games, and the need to explode out of the blocks at launch with the console, we knew we needed a disruptive, attention-grabbing campaign that would get gamers talking and drive anticipation. Thus was born the "It's Thinking" campaign, where we urged you to "Not think out loud, it might hear you" informed you that "Outsmarting it will only make it smarter" and warned you that "You know it's alive. Worse. It knows it's alive" Quirky and slightly dark, the ads generated more PR than the media spend - always the metric of a successful campaign...The media plan came to a crescendo on launch night as we debuted "Apocalypse" during the MTV VMA's, still ten years later one of the more dramatic and lavishly-produced video game commercials. My eternal thanks will go to the teams at Foote, Cone and Belding, our advertising agency at the time, and Access Communications, the PR agency who were in our corner for every round of this enthralling and exhilarating fight.

Allow me this forum to correct one misconception about the final days of the Dreamcast. As we emerged from the Christmas selling season of 2000 and collated the sales data in the following January, it was evident that we were falling short of the critical mass target we had set ourselves for continued investment (read: ongoing losses) in the hardware business. Sega of Japan had rightly set sales goals for the North American market for that critical period, and as strong as our numbers were, they fell short of where we needed to be to continue. The decision was made, from Japan, to pull the plug and begin the transition to becoming a multi-platform third party developer and publisher. We at SOA, while disappointed, were in full agreement that this was the only real course of action, and it was with a heavy heart that I hosted the conference call on January 31st, 2001, announcing that Sega was ceasing manufacturing of the Dreamcast console. The call on the decision was made by SOJ. The conference call to announce the decision was conducted by SOA.

Many saw the Dreamcast as a spectacular failure, a last-gasp effort by a once-powerful player in the industry to remain relevant (and solvent). If measured by longevity and the ultimate financial outcome, they were right. But the Dreamcast had a profound and lasting impact on the world of video games. Isao Okawa, the Chairman of Sega Enterprises and the driving force behind the Dreamcast, tragically passed away two months after that fateful January conference call. He had a vision that a game console, combined with the power of the internet, could bring people together in ways that were previously unimaginable. He didn't live to see that vision come to fruition, and his beloved Dreamcast couldn't survive to play a role in the powerful world of connected gaming we all enjoy today, but it certainly lit the spark, and that we should never forget...

FIFA and Madden Earning Great Acclaim

PeterMooreBlog — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 00:42:00 GMT

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.

FIFA and Active More Workouts Make News at GamesCom

PeterMooreBlog — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 14:17:00 GMT

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.

Madden Launch Is Here

PeterMooreBlog — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 20:30:00 GMT

As excited as we all are about the launch of Madden at midnight tonight, I'm actually thousands of miles away in the UK, where I gave a keynote this morning at the Edinburgh Interactive Festival. My speech focused on the evolution of EA SPORTS over the past two years, while I also participated in an entertaining Oxford-style debate in the afternoon about the power of blockbuster games in our industry. With Madden in stores Friday and FIFA not far behind in October, you can guess which side I was on.

As for Edinburgh, this is my first time in this beautiful city, and in addition to the Interactive Festival, there are a myriad of other celebratory events taking place during the month of August. Most prominent is the Military Tattoo, which takes place in the evenings against the backdrop of the 14th century castle which still dominates the city skyline today. I was fortunate to be able attend the event on Tuesday evening, and what a spectacle it was...

Next week, I'll be at GamesCom in Cologne, where we'll be showing a number of our upcoming fall titles, including NBA LIVE 10, Tiger Woods PGA Tour Online and NHL 10. FIFA is obviously our headliner for the show, and we'll have a number of announcements about both FIFA as well as EA SPORTS Active next week.

Even from across the pond, I've enjoyed following all the anticipation for our 21st Madden launch. I'll be in bed and won't be able to watch tonight's preseason game with the Steelers and Cardinals, but I've read plenty of commentary the past few days on the product. I loved GameDaily's, "If you're a football fan and you don't have this game, well, guess what? You're not a football fan.", and I'd encourage you to let me know what you think.

Of course, the conversations will be happening across various pages on the new easports.com, where you can talk to development team members and ask questions as you play, get tips and tricks from the dev team, check the online play and online franchise FAQ and even post your favorite highlights. Enjoy the game...

Cheers,

Peter

Training Camps Have Opened

PeterMooreBlog — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 22:54:00 GMT

August is certainly a great time of the year, as NFL Training Camps open and we near the launch of Madden. On Aug. 14, Madden hits stores, and you may have started seeing some of our TV advertising as we approach launch.

As I wrote yesterday on the PlayStation.blog, I love to see how "training" for Madden launch has become just as important to gamers as NFL Training Camps are for NFL players. These great new TV spots, created in collaboration with our good partners at PlayStation, clearly make that point!

(Please visit the site to view this media)

(Please visit the site to view this media)

Hope you're ready for Aug. 14. Be sure to download your Madden demo today if you haven't yet done so...

Cheers,

Peter

Fedor’s In the Game

PeterMooreBlog — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 14:25:00 GMT

As you may have seen, yesterday we announced the addition of Fedor Emelianenko, the world's top-ranked MMA fighter, and Gegard Mousasi and Renato Sobral to the growing roster of fighters that will be featured in EA SPORTS MMA in 2010.

In particular, we couldn't be more delighted to announce Fedor as part of the team. His commitment to our product underlines how serious we are about continuing to invest in building this franchise. Despite commentary to the contrary, we are now in our second year of development, market planning and licensing execution at Tiburon and, with the release of our game, look forward to contributing to the global growth of mixed martial arts.

There is plenty of opportunity for growth in the coming years, and we are more than ready to do our part by bringing a top quality game to market featuring innovative gameplay and top class fighters...

NCAA Football in Stores, First Look at MMA and More

PeterMooreBlog — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 14:37:00 GMT

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.

The Champ is Back

PeterMooreBlog — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 08:48:00 GMT

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

Mr. President: We Have a Challenge For You

PeterMooreBlog — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 23:17:00 GMT

My ears perked up earlier this week when I read some of the news reports following President Obama’s remarks at the annual meeting of the American Medical Association in Chicago. During the President’s speech on health care reform, he said: "It means going for a run or hitting the gym, and raising our children to step away from the video games and spend more time playing outside."

As a father of three and someone who spends many a morning or lunch hour out on a run and/or in the gym, I applaud the President urging Americans to get off the couch and get active. Of course, I can’t resist pointing out that while I’ve always wholeheartedly endorsed moderation in anything you do, including playing games, it may be time for the President and his family to put their Wii to good use and fire up the 30-Day Challenge with EA SPORTS Active. This is a “game” even the President may not want to “step away” from.

To be clear, there has always been an big place in the lives of my entire family for spending time outside and staying fit. But I continue to be excited about what EA SPORTS Active is bringing to the world of physical fitness and the way it is changing people’s lives in the process – whether you’re someone who hasn’t broken a sweat in 10 years or someone who hits the gym six days a week. In fact, I know he’s in pretty good shape, but I guarantee the President wouldn’t look quite so smooth walking across the White House lawn to Marine One the morning after his first session with EA SPORTS Active (especially if he does those pesky lunges)!

You’ve heard me say it so many times before, but it’s refreshing to see the opportunities we have now on the Wii and what some of the new motion control technologies in development at Microsoft and Sony may bring to enhance an at-home fitness experience like EA SPORTS Active. In fact, I’d be willing to bet there are more consoles getting far more use in American homes than there is exercise equipment, so it’s up to us to continue to use the platform for good.

Mr. President, here is my challenge to you: Try EA SPORTS Active and I guarantee you’ll need aides saying “Yes You Can!” to finish your first workout.

Shifting gears, I mentioned last week that it was great to be back at E3 this year to feel the energy and excitement that is always swirling around this industry, particularly after my well-publicized complaints of the previous year. Of course, the days after the show are always fun as we watch for all the awards that are announced by so many of the news outlets who covered the show.

While it’s tough for EA SPORTS since all of our products are pitted against each other in the “Best Sports Game” category (don’t even get me started about whether I think any of our games should be considered beyond just the sports category), I was pleased to see more than 40 nominations for EA SPORTS, including at least one nomination for every award-eligible title we had at the show. Four different titles were also named winners, including Madden, Fight Night, Tiger Woods PGA TOUR and NHL.

In the case of Madden, kudos to the team at Tiburon for getting the nod for Best Technical Achievement by G4 on top of its multiple wins for Best Sports Game. The new Online Franchise mode in Madden didn’t just beat out other worthy contenders in sports, but bested G4’s other finalists like Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, The Beatles: Rock Band, and Mass Effect 2 (among others). It’s further evidence of sports games being leaders in innovation, particularly with online where we’re connecting sports fans from around the world and throughout the season with experiences we could have only dreamed about a few years ago.

One of the highlights of our press conference was the video for Madden Online Franchise. MOF is a football fan’s dream come true and if you didn’t see the video, we have it for you here. Enjoy!

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The New and Improved E3

PeterMooreBlog — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 18:07:00 GMT

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