Peter Moore Blog : Madden

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.

Talking Football

PeterMooreBlog — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 14:35:00 GMT

It is a big day for EA SPORTS football franchises on both sides of the Atlantic. In the UK, at Arsenal's Emirates stadium, I took a few moments to speak to Stevie Morgan (if you haven't heard his FIFA podcasts go here).

(Please visit the site to view this media)

In New York, we've just announced not one, but two cover athletes (Larry Fitzgerald and Troy Polamalu) for Madden NFL 10 along with a whole host of other news.

It's already been a busy day and I've still got several hours of questions from the UK games press to field, but I look forward to hearing your opinions on the latest EA SPORTS news!

Cheers,

Peter

John Madden: a True Sports Icon

PeterMooreBlog — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 23:18:00 GMT

As football fans across the country were greeted with the news this morning of John Madden's retirement from broadcasting, I was struck by just how big an impact John has made on the sport for more than four decades. We all obviously knew this day would one day come, when John would walk away from the booth, but he certainly leaves a lasting legacy that we're proud to be able to carry on through our Madden NFL videogame franchise for years to come.

As you can imagine, we've had dozens of questions today about what impact John's retirement from NBC will have on EA SPORTS. I'm pleased that we continue our strong relationship with John and will continue to produce new versions Madden NFL football with his collaboration, including this August with Madden NFL 10.

John is a true sports icon who has made an indelible impact on the sport of football which will be felt forever. His prolific coaching and broadcasting careers, as well as his distinct role in shaping the EA SPORTS football experience have redefined how multiple generations have come to know and love the sport with unrivaled passion. We're excited to see his legacy live on in the 21st year of Madden NFL football, and well beyond. And how about this for a fun stat? Our dev team at Tiburon estimates that John has recorded roughly 30,000 lines of commentary for the game over the years.

In other news .... It's Round 2 for Geoff Keighley and I on Round 4. That's right, for those of you who remember me taking it to Geoff on FaceBreaker last fall, he was back for more recently here at EA, where he and I did battle on Fight Night Round 4. The episode airs tonight at 12:30 a.m, on SpikeTV and SpikeHD and will feature the first look at gameplay from one of the most anticipated games of the year. We also went deep on all kinds of other new content in FNR4, which hits stores in just a couple more months. Anyone want to guess who won?

A final point on the concept of communication via this blog. I cannot and will not respond to individual questions that ask for information on titles ahead of when we are ready or able to talk publicly. For the reasoning behind this, I will refer you back to my recent post regarding the complexity of announcing licensed games in development. I will also urge you to visit the individual development team blogs for the most up-to-date information on all of our franchises. This is clearly a source of frustration for at least a couple of you, but I will beg your indulgence and understanding that we are running a complex business that has a myriad of stakeholders, all of whom need to be in agreement before we discuss certain parts of our business publicly.

Peter

Quality's the Key

petermoore — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 15:50:00 GMT

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…

Now on to that other football…

petermoore — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 18:54:00 GMT

Just arrived in Leipzig for the annual Games Convention, where we will be talking about our globalization strategy for EA SPORTS, as well as giving attendees a much-anticipated deep dive on FIFA 09, by far our top selling game here in Europe.

It would be remiss of me if I didn’t thank all of the members of Madden Nation who joined us at the Rose Bowl last week for Maddenpalooza. As you can see from the attached video, a good time was had by all, as we welcomed a number of NFL legends, had non-stop music from acts like Busta Rhymes and Good Charlotte, and of course, had a full afternoon of hands-on with the game itself before our partners Wal-Mart sold the first game at the close of the evening.

We are also very proud of the outstanding reviews the game is garnering on the three consoles – great work from the team at Tiburon.

[flv width='400' height='300']http://index.cem.assets.ea.com/cem/u/f/GPO/easports.com/peter_moore_blogs/Madden_Launch_Video_60a.wav_VP6_768K.flv[/flv]

Red Sox making me feel very uneasy – mid-August and we are 4 ½ games back of Tampa Bay? Only good news is that the Yankees are even further back. Starting to feel like the wild card is the only way we get to the post season.

Across the pond, I watched Liverpool Saturday morning on Fox Soccer Channel (how did we displaced footie fans ever get by without FSC?). Unconvincing performance, but a win nonetheless. Thank God for Torres…

More later in the week.

Peter

Back from Season Opener

petermoore — Sun, 11 May 2008 17:02:00 GMT

Back home after a big week up in Vancouver. We hosted our first-ever EA SPORTS Season Opener, a showcase of most of our upcoming games for this year for media from all over the world. It was a great chance to give early looks at our new games to media who had come from near and far to get a taste of what they can see this year from EA SPORTS.

You may have read some of the news and game previews that have come out of the event over the past few days. A few things I wanted to highlight:

•   I’ve mentioned a number of times that a real priority for us as the gaming industry evolves is diversifying our portfolio. We unveiled two new initiatives last week that I think we will do that.
o   We announced a new sub-brand with games designed for a broad casual sports gaming audience. EA SPORTS Freestyle replaces EA SPORTS Big, and we plan to ship three new games in the next year under this brand. FaceBreaker, coming in September, will be the first. While no announcements have been made, I’m also very interested in the health and fitness space and think we can be a leader in this space. Afterall, I was a P.E. teacher years and years ago and am excited about what we could do here.
o   We also announced an initiative for the Wii called “All-Play”. We’re designing five of our most popular franchises exclusively for the Wii this year and they’ll feature unique controls, unique modes, unique presentation, and unique packaging. All-Play is a much more all-encompassing design philosophy that expands significantly on last year’s Family Play control scheme in Madden, FIFA and NBA LIVE.

•   Last Wednesday, we confirmed that Fight Night Round 4 is in development and slated to release in 2009. It was an honor to have three of boxing’s best at EAC to make the announcement. You’ll see below that Winky Wright, Lennox Lewis and Sugar Ray Leonard look more at home in the ring that I do, but it was sure fun listening to them talk about the sport and picking their brains for ideas for Fight Night. We obviously also listen to feedback from the fans on what you want to see in our games, and so we’re also excited to be bringing Mike Tyson back to videogame boxing for the first time in nearly a decade. That’s something fans have been begging for.

•   I also had a chance to catch up with a number of our producers over the past week and remain really motivated by the great work that’s being done. After we had our first announcement about this year’s Tiger Woods game last week, we had some questions about some of the new features. So I caught up with Executive Producer Mike Taramykin and asked him to clarify a few things they have planned for this year. Click here to see what Mike had to say.

Cheers,

Peter

Answering YOUR Questions!

petermoore — Thu, 01 May 2008 23:14:00 GMT

We’re back again with more answers to some of the questions you’ve been posing to me here on the blog. As I’ve said in the past, both myself and our development teams enjoy reading all the comments and questions that have been streaming in. While we can’t respond to everything, I do try at least once a month to take a handful of questions straight to the teams and get the answers you are looking for.

Of course, as we get closer to launch on most of our franchises, producers will be keeping blogs and handling your questions directly on the individual product websites.

Pdro said:
“Hello peter moore, i dont get what your tying to say in this blog but instead of working on that site, why dont you help fix easports site up, the login is always messed up. the site needs to be cleaned up, and easports site forums are the worst. nothing but spam and post that makes no sence. oh update the madden09 site, im curious to see what the new game looks like, im tired of seing old maddens info on there. i wana see 09 news! but ya even i use the internt too much. especilly easports site as you can see by me replying here and the developer post on the forums.
good luck with easports title, dosnt seem your making much of an effort on the games. your more focusd on myfootballclub site an the final4 an stuff. Lol”

Peter: What login problems are you having? If you are having trouble with your password, please try the “forgot password” option where your password will be e-mailed to the e-mail address you originally signed up for. Otherwise, if you can’t remember, you could always create another account. What parts of the site are you talking about cleaning up? We have the latest information that’s available for our titles on there, including the Madden NFL 09 site which launched last week when we announced Brett Favre as our new cover athlete for the game.
As for the myfootballclub website, I do like to spend some of my free time on that site interacting with what they have to offer, but I mention the site because we have our own social networking sites available right now (www.easportsworld.com and www.easportsfootball.com ). In this blog, I won’t just touch on things going on in the business of EA SPORTS, but I’ll talk about things outside EA SPORTS and the industry all together that interest me.]

Dan said:
“As both a PS3 and Xbox 360 owner, I'm happy that both versions of NCAA 09 Football will be running at a smooth, 60 FPS. Now, I have some variety in choosing which version of the game I want to buy! Can we expect the same from Madden '09?”

Phil Frazier: Both the PS3 and X360 versions of Madden will run at a smooth 60FPS. Even better, while trying to squeeze performance out of each console we’ve managed to significantly improve the visuals of the game this year.

Henry said:
“I've been playing Madden for a long time and really enjoy the Game. The question I have is for the upcoming Madden, will there be a way to add previous version controls for Madden 09.(ie Madden 02,03,05): While some of the controls can be customized, it would be nice to pick a particular year that can be selected by the user.”

Phil Frazier: The Madden experience is tuned specifically for the default set of controls. While there was a significant change to our control scheme when we made the jump from current to next gen, our controls each year stay mostly the same so that our fans don’t have to completely re-learn the game. Madden 09 does not have controls from specific versions of Madden but we do offer a lot in terms of customization. All of the customization options in the game allow any user to alter their experience so that the game delivers their exact ideal football experience.

Don Juan said:
“I just looked at a youtube video of nfl fever 2002..The makers of NFL Fever were able to use the specs of original Xbox to put towels on their player models 6 years ago...How come the makers of Madden and NCAA football still haven't figured out how to put towels and other realistic additions on their player models?”

Dale Jackson: Madden 09 features extremely realistic player models. The models this year have been completely rebuilt, and along with the upgraded visuals, provide the most realistic looking sports game ever. We don’t have towels this year but will make sure this gets some serious consideration for future iterations.

More from NYC with Brett Favre!

petermoore — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 18:53:00 GMT

Following our unveiling Thursday evening of Brett Favre as the Madden NFL 09 cover athlete on The Late Show with David Letterman, we followed up with a luncheon in New York City honoring the legendary quarterback on Friday.

Sponsored by EA SPORTS, we brought in Sterling Sharpe, former teammate of Brett's in Green Bay, as the MC. Also present were Steve Mariucci, who was Brett's QB coach in the early years, as well as Matt Hasselbeck, who was back-up to Brett in Green Bay before moving to Seattle.

I've attached some exclusive pictures of the event, including the presentation to Brett of a limited-edition Xbox 360 featuring the cover artwork. Great event, honoring a tremendous athlete and human being.

Brett Favre is the Madden NFL 09 Cover Guy!

petermoore — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 07:14:00 GMT

As you may have heard by now, we tonight announced Brett Favre as our cover athlete for Madden NFL 09. Brett unveiled the new packaging on The Late Show with David Letterman, and I was proud to be present at the taping to see the announcement first hand.

It is with great pride that we take the bold step of featuring a retired player on the front of packaging, an honor normally reserved for a player at the peak of his game. I say with great pride, because some may question the marketing strategy behind this (and many at EA did just that, quite frankly). I don't for one minute.

In this, the 20th year of this storied game franchise, as far as I was concerned there was only one choice. As we look back over the past couple of decades in the NFL, Brett stands out to me personally as a beacon for everything that made me a huge fan of this great game from almost the moment I arrived from the UK in the early eighties (and became a fan of the LA Rams, with Vince Ferragamo at QB, but that’s a story for another posting…).

Forget all of his record-breaking stats – it was his approach to every game he played, his leadership and spirit on the field, his “gun-slinger” style in an era of robotic QB’s, and most of all the way he wore his heart on his sleeve for us all to see. I can’t forget the Monday night game versus the Raiders the night after his father unexpectedly died, when he threw for 399 yards and four touchdowns. Unless you were wearing silver and black that night, you both cheered and cried for him.

His fight with addiction to prescription drugs, his wife Deanna’s battle with cancer soon after his father died…all of this makes this good old boy from Mississippi one of my favorite players of all time. Nobody deserves more to be on the cover of our game this year than Brett Favre. So you can question whether having a retired player on the cover is a smart move, but we made this decision for one reason, and one reason alone… because it was the right thing to do.

Draft Time

petermoore — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 01:00:00 GMT

So I see the Dolphins have already signed Jake Long to a 5-year contract. So much for any suspense on Saturday morning when the draft gets underway.

I hate to sound like a broken record, but I’ve mentioned a couple of times already that I’m getting excited for NFL Head Coach. I keep seeing really good things, and think this is my kind of game. Which is why I wanted to call your attention, if you haven’t already seen it, to our announcement today that we’re going to ship NFL Head Coach as a standalone game. I have to admit, even I was surprised by how much feedback we’ve gotten the past few weeks since we announced it as a featured item of our Madden Collector’s edition. That’ still going to be the first place to get it, but keep an eye out for NFL Head Coach on Sept. 2 on its own.

Incidentally, we also released a simulation of this weekend’s draft using the game engine from Head Coach. We had Jake Long going No. 1. Surprising from my perspective that we have seven ACC guys going in the first round. I thought that was a basketball conference! Not surprising was that USC led the way with four players in the first round. And how about Cal’s DeSean Jackson, my own personal favorite in the draft. He may be small, but whoever gets him is going to be happy they did.

PS. My day was officially ruined by Liverpool’s John Arne Riise’s tragic own goal with almost the last touch of the game versus Chelsea in the Champion’s League. Tough to go to Stamford Bridge and pull out a win now…

Cheating, Hot Zones and Approachability

petermoore — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 05:43:00 GMT

As I’ve mentioned previously, I enjoy reading a lot of the very colorful comments many of you have been providing on my blog. I now regularly take many of the ideas and questions I see straight to our development teams and look for answers. I figured it would only make sense if I started sharing some of what I've been finding out.

Again, the best way to get the scoop is to go straight to the source – our production teams. And about once a month or so, I’ll be trying to report back at least a handful of answers to your most commonly asked questions. Of course, as we get closer to launch on many of this year’s games you’ll want to view our producer blogs on each product website as well for even more detail.

This week, we talk NBA LIVE and Madden.

Tim G says “There's stuff that should just not happen in basketball games when there's no pressure on your character; going out of bounds on an inbound, stepping back over center court. There’s a lot of frustrating issues in both games but Live they are far more prevalent. Also the "Hot Zones" are quite obnoxious looking. Colouring the entire court during play is ridiculous, and 2k's solution of cell-phone-style signal bars is much better.”

Here’s what Brian Ullrich, our line producer for NBA LIVE had to say about hotzones:

“We built our hotzones based on the real hotspots tracked by the NBA, so the look was based on that. We found we had to add a third color (the NBA ones are red, blue, and a kind of brown color) to make them understandable. We didn't have as much rendering or systems support on hotzones as we would have liked. The hotzones were done late in the schedule and there wasn't much time to iterate on them once they were done. We tried a bunch of color combinations and found the ones the best we could do in the time we had. We are improving them significantly this year so stay tuned.”

Regarding Inbounds/Center Court Issues, Brian says:

“We had many problems around accurately determining exactly where all of a player's limbs are with respect to out of bounds. At the end of last year this resulted in players being called out of bounds more than they should have, just through the act of receiving a pass, dribbling in place, etc. The only way we could fix it was to make the out of bounds call pretty generous. Usually the camera is far enough away that you don't notice this, but when you look at plays on instant replay it becomes noticeable. We will be tuning this again this year, and it will be better, but this is something I doubt we’ll ever be able to keep it from happening in all cases.”

AJ says, “My league has been running now since Madden 06. We love being able to draft our teams from scratch and taking them online and playing a full 16 game schedule and playoffs included. Problem is this year there are no stats after the games? Why not Mr. Moore? I ask you to allow us to have the stats of our games, custom teams or not.”

Here’s what Dale Jackson, our Executive Producer for Madden NFL told me:

“Year after year, the discussion of league play and stat tracking has been a recurring theme in feedback on Madden. Madden NFL 09 will address this feedback directly. Without giving too much away, let’s just say that those who enjoy online stats won’t be disappointed. Based on the amount we see this requested in forums, we’re very excited about our features we have planned here.”

Ron says, “ Mr. Moore, I recall in an interview with Game Informer you mentioned something along the lines of making Madden more playable for casual gamers. Is there way to customize the engine to satisfy the casual as well as the hardcore gamer who wants more simulation and realism? For instance why not just create a separate arcade mode for the casual user who knows very little about football. This can possibly perhaps increase your sales which from what I understand decreased last year.”

Great question, Ron. I’ll take this one first. I’m passionate about making our games more approachable without “dumbing down” the experience. Sometimes that means new modes (as you point out), sometimes that means creating different control schemes (as we did last year with Family Play on our Wii games), but it’s also very important that this also mean creating approachability in our core game experiences as well. Tuning our games to be fun and approachable regardless of what your skill level is at first and making them adapt to meet your skill level.

Here’s Dale’s take on this:

“Designing features that make the game more approachable while also adding a layer of depth for the hardcore can be tricky. Madden NFL 09 has new features that adapt the experience to be fun no matter what your level of skill. On top of that, it’s highly customizable for those that enjoy tweaking the game themselves.”

Smokecapone says, “What are you guys going to do about cheating in online gaming? I play Madden religiously (PS3) even though the game is not what it is on the PS2. I get tired like many others that play the game the way it’s played in reality to go home from work or whatever and relax and chill by playing a quick game online only to be cheated because the idiot can’t pick up on basic controls of Madden."

Madden 20th Anniversary and More!

petermoore — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 18:34:00 GMT

As I mentioned when we migrated to this new format for the blog a couple of weeks ago, one of the things I was looking forward to being able to do was to share more videos. As we get deeper into the production and launch cycle for our 2008 games, we’ll have plenty to share. To get things started, I wanted to give you a behind-the-scenes taste of life at EA Redwood Shores, where I am based full time. Obviously, our two main development studios are just outside of Vancouver (EA Canada) and in Orlando (Tiburon), but I thought you may like a look at what goes on back in the Bay Area, including our player’s lounge, sports bar, my desk and video conferencing area. Take a look.

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By now, I gather you’ve all seen our news last week about our Madden NFL 09 20th Anniversary Collector’s Edition. As anticipation starts to grow for August, there were a few common themes that I wanted to pick up on from many of the posts and chatter on the boards the past few days.

1. Reviews were mixed when we shipped NFL Head Coach a couple of years ago. Believe me, I think I’ve heard most of the good and bad on that one, mostly from our development teams who are acutely aware of everything you liked and didn’t like…down to the finest details. From what I’ve seen of new Head Coach, this is an entirely new game. I know you don’t want to just hear that from me, so listen to our producers over the next few months talk and show you everything they’ve done to re-work a concept that has a ton of potential, especially with how we’re creating a connected experience between Madden and Head Coach.

2. We knew that our decision to not develop this year’s Madden for the PC would be an unpopular decision in some circles. But I’ll reiterate what I said a couple of weeks ago in this space…the PC presents some very serious business challenges to us in the sports category, particularly because so many of you all are playing your favorite sports games on the PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii. We are committed to shipping a limited number of our games on the PC this year, but we’ve also had to cut a few of our games from the platform. We do have ideas for how to revitalize the PC for sports games and the types of games that are best suited to the platform, and we’ll continue to explore those.

Couple of other quick notes…

Last time I mentioned that I’d be speaking with Will Brooks, founder of MyFootballClub.co.uk. We had a terrific conversation late last week, and I’ll be sharing some of that over the next couple of weeks on the blog. You don’t have to be a football fan to find what Will is doing fascinating, so hopefully that will be something to look forward to.

You’ll no doubt be happy to hear that I have climbed out of the basement of the EA SPORTS March Madness bracket (which, by the way, benefits a great charitable organization, the Jimmy V Foundation - http://www.jimmyv.org/). I head to San Antonio for The Final Four on Friday, and I will report back to you on what goes on during this great sports weekend.

Liverpool produced a workmanlike performance to beat Everton on Sunday morning, and unlike last weekend, made the early alarm call worthwhile. Big game versus Arsenal on Wednesday night – wish us luck.

Oh, and play ball!!! Go Sox…

March 27th

petermoore — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 17:26:00 GMT

Many of you will have seen this announced today, but just in case, I wanted to make everyone aware of this exciting announcement from EA SPORTS regarding Madden 09. Everyone here is so proud of having reached this incredible milestone with our storied Madden franchise, and we couldn’t be more delighted to offer this collector’s edition to commemorate the 20th anniversary. For more information, read this release we just sent out.

Press Release

February 14th

petermoore — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 19:04:00 GMT

Thanks to everyone who’s visited my new blog over the past few days this week. It’s been entertaining reading both the emails I’ve received as well as some of the feedback I’ve seen online since Monday.

First things first, a few things you should know:

-No. I don’t have a mystery ghost writer. Believe it or not, this was actually my idea and I’m managing to carve out a little bit of time at least once a week, if not more, to share my (sometimes) random thoughts. I love this stuff … it’s a lot of fun.

-Yes. I agree, the format we’re posting in right now isn’t ideal. It also isn’t final. As I said on Monday, I know I’m a little late to the blogosphere, so please forgive me here that it’s going to take a little time to get this exactly the way we want it. But the wheels are in motion for this to get bigger and better over time. Have patience – all will be resolved in due time.

- Yes. I love the feedback. Trust me, I’ve heard it all over the years – the good and the bad … and the really bad – so it’s fun hearing from you and having this dialogue. And while I won’t be able to reply to all of you, you should expect me to use this forum to touch on as many of the big themes and questions I see as possible.

I also wanted to take a few minutes to give you my thoughts on the news we announced yesterday regarding the extension of our exclusive licenses with the NFL and NFL PLAYERS. Here are a few things I think you should know. I want to make sure you have the facts straight from me, and while some of you may still take issue with the situation, it’s important to me that you have a grasp on the issues.

- Quality is our top priority. Everything else is a distant second place. This year’s Madden has its best scores since the transition, it’s won numerous awards, and we feel like we’ve got great momentum heading into this year and real reason to be optimistic.

- When people say that EA forced the NFL and NFLPA into going exclusive on this license, they really couldn’t be further from the truth. Four years ago, the NFL determined they wanted to take their business to one partner and opened that opportunity up to anyone who wished to bid. Several did, and we’re delighted that we earned the exclusivity rights. Likewise, we’re thrilled to have been able to extend our agreements with both the league and players association.

- Why now? Adding an extra three years to these agreements during a pre-determined negotiating window allows us to plan for the long term and know that we’re in a position to invest in the engine and invest in the resources it will take to make great NFL football games for years to come. It’s just good business, and again allows us to invest and innovate.

- While we’re thrilled to have this exclusive license, there’s certainly nothing that prevents other companies from releasing football games. We saw that this year and know there are other football-related games in development. Believe me, our team never rests and they’re anxious to continue to innovate in the years to come. We welcome the competition.

- One of the most exciting things about this partnership is that it allows us to experiment with other experiences that complement what we do on Madden. You’ve seen that in the past with Head Coach, NFL Tour and even Madden en Espanol last year. Some of you may not even realize we even do our own Fantasy Football on easports.com, and that’ s an area that I think we can do more in. Count on this: we’ll have more announcements coming very soon to show you that we’re committed to finding new high-quality NFL- related game experiences. We even provide our technology for world-class brands to promote their football emotion and authenticity. For those of you that didn’t get to see it, here is a link to the Nike TV commercial we worked on, using the Madden engine. We did two versions, Giants and Patriots. Even though I would only like to show you the Pats version, the good sportsman in me allows you to view both: http://www.nike.com/usnikefootball/? sitesrc=uslanding

- Last fall, I was at Wembley Stadium for the Giants-Dolphins game. As awful, quite frankly, as that game turned out being (due in no small part to the typically miserable London weather), 90,000 hardy fans turned out and gave the NFL great reason to believe that globalization of the game is a real strategic priority. I see no better way to introduce football to people in other parts of the world than through the universal language of videogames and Madden. (And, by the way, I never, EVER, could have fathomed that the NY Giants team I saw that afternoon would eventually be the Super Bowl champions. It still disgusts me. 18-1? Simply not good enough…).

Thanks for hearing me out. We’re so passionate about our NFL games, and we know there are millions of fans out there who are to, that it’s important to me that you all understand the real story.

And if you have a problem with it, take it out on me and not on the team in Orlando busting their butts building the best Madden in the 20 year history of the franchise. Incredible… 20 years. Tell me how many other games have had that kind of track record. This is going to be quite a celebration this year.

One last thing … I know a number of you will be at GDC next week or reading about some of what will go on there. If you don’t believe me when I tell you how much energy and passion and truly remarkable innovation that goes into developing Madden year in and year out, I urge you to check out a lecture we’ll give next week in San Francisco. Philip Holt, the head of our Tiburon studio, will be speaking on all the detailed ins and outs that go into making Madden one of the most popular games in the history of the industry. It’s a fascinating and complicated process that Philip leads in Orlando and I’d urge you to check out his talk.

I’m off to practice kicking field goals. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you will soon…

Drop me a line at InsidetheGame@ea.com.

- Peter