Interviews// EA Sports' Oliver Hughes

SPOnG: Franchises like Tiger Woods get a new iteration every year - is it challenging to rely on bringing new features to each version, instead of a simple roster or player update?

Oliver: It's very challenging. I don't think we go 'Here's Tiger Woods 08, we have X-Y-Z characters' and then the next year 'Here's Tiger Woods 09, same game but we just added three more characters'. I'd like to think the consumers we target have a little bit more savvy than that; we have to be quite clever with what we add to make sure we're not just adding new people and courses. We try to bring new innovations that improve on the gameplay.

One of the things where we do that is by being active in listening to our consumers - things they complain about we try and fix. Say for example in Tiger Woods 08, people complained about the online mode, so we introduced a simultaneous online mode in Tiger Woods 09 and they loved it. This year we've built on that, so the online has a lot more depth this time round. Last year we heard that many didn't like the putting system, and we worked around that by creating a new system for this year.

So we're constantly listening, evolving and updating our games based on the feedback we get from our community. But we're also trying to innovate at the same time with the MotionPlus and Tournament modes.


SPOnG: Finally, I just wanted to get your thoughts on comments made by a developer recently about the profitability of games on the Wii. There's the idea that Nintendo's first party games and Ubisoft's Petz games are the only ones able to turn a profit, and games have to sell millions to break even. How profitable has the Wii been for EA Sports and do you think that's a valid claim?

Oliver: I don't know overall how profitable it's been for EA and EA Sports. What I do know is that Tiger Woods, being a really successful Wii game, has grown as a series and as a result we're making Nintendo's console the lead platform for that franchise. It's the best-selling version that we make out of all the other consoles.

Generally, I would say in some cases that the profitability claim might be correct, it really depends on how much developers spend making a game. I think the Dr. Kawashimas of the world don't spend millions of pounds making games and they're pretty successful.

It depends on what kind of game you make and how much you invest into its development, really. If you develop a game for the Wii as an afterthought, you probably won't get much return on your costs. But making the right kind of game and dedicating yourself to it will pretty much see success. For EA, the Wii is really suited to sports games and I think that translates well into the popularity of our titles.

SPOnG: Oliver, thanks for your time.


Tiger Woods 10 has a Wii release date of 16th June, 2009, while the Wii-exclusive Grand Slam Tennis will hit UK stores 19th June, 2009.