Peter Moore Blog : EA SPORTS Virtual Playbook

Award Season

PeterMooreBlog — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 12:27:00 GMT

It's been quite a week for us around here. No sooner did I get back from a great trip to London, where we were honored with the Grand Prix at the MCV Awards, but then on Monday in New York I'm proud to say that we were awarded, along with our great partners at ESPN, a Sports Emmy for Outstanding Technical Achievement for the EA SPORTS Virtual Playbook.

Being recognized alongside the finest in sports broadcasting for this breakthrough innovation means a great deal to us, especially as it signals real success against our vision to take the EA SPORTS brand even deeper into the greater sports landscape.

In case you haven't yet had the opportunity to see the EA SPORTS Virtual Playbook on ESPN, the technology debuted last fall and delivers "augmented reality" that allows ESPN's NFL analysts to interact in the studio with the virtual players from our 3D game engines to provide insight, education and analysis to fans about key football plays and techniques. We've really only just begun to scratch the surface on the power of this technology, and I'm excited to see where we go in more sports in the coming months and years.

To learn more about the EA SPORTS Virtual Playbook, be sure to check out this Q&A with Jason Parker, our very talented engineer who deserves huge kudos for his vision on this project from day 1. And of course, I'll welcome you to take a look at the great experience I had when our partners at ESPN welcomed me into the studio several weeks ago to take a spin "inside" the EA SPORTS Virtual Playbook for myself.

(Please visit the site to view this media)

It would also be remiss of me not to comment on the fabulous run the Red Sox are currently on. Winning 11 of 12 has certainly made up for a slow start to the season. Ellsbury stealing home on the Yankees and a rather befuddled Pettitte and Posada on Sunday night is the highlight of the season so far...

Changing the Game: EA SPORTS Virtual Playbook

petermoore — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 22:43:00 GMT

Every once in a while, a technology emerges in sports that changes the way we watch and analyze the game. The first down yellow line in football jumps to mind, and as someone who struggled to follow hockey on television, the ill-fated glowing puck was a favorite of mine. I can even remember seeing Liverpool’s red shirts on the BBC for the first time in the early seventies when we finally got a color TV, having watched them play in “dark grayscale” for the previous decade…

We at EA SPORTS are confident we have created a similar paradigm shift in sports broadcast analysis. In development by EA for more than a year, the EA SPORTS Virtual Playbook completely re-writes the book on the way studio analysts bring to life key match-ups, formations, even actual game action itself. You will see it for the first time this weekend on several ESPN broadcasts – including its official debut on Sunday Countdown – as we help kick-off the NFL season. As you know, ESPN is our long-term partner in many areas of content development and creation, and in this instance their talented crew back in Bristol, Conn., has helped bring the technology to life in a myriad of innovative ways.

Like the leap in games from 2D to 3D back in the mid-nineties, EA SPORTS Virtual Playbook will finally bring to the sports broadcast studio the imagery and level of realism we have grown accustomed to in sports games for over a decade. Here are some exclusive behind-the-scenes glimpses from the set where testing was being done earlier this week with ESPN’s Merril Hoge:

For those of you outside of North America, please rest assured that we are not restricting this to the colonies. We are working to some day be able to apply EA SPORTS Virtual Playbook to a number of other sports, including soccer (of course).

Enjoy the games this weekend, and Go Pats!