Interviews// EA Sports Head Peter Moore

Peter Moore on the state of the games industry:

SPOnG: Do you feel that the industry is generally in good shape at the moment, and moving in the right direction?

PM: Yes, I think we’re in far better shape than most industries. We’re not immune to the macroeconomic challenges that the world is having – you’ve seen the numbers. We’re certainly not growing this year by much, if at all.

I think at EA we’ve determined that business would be good if it was flat year-on-year. There are industries that would love to be flat year-on-year, so we should feel good about the stability of our industry. But it’s not enjoying the unbridled growth that it was a couple of years ago – 20 per cent year-on-year. You’re not going to see that until things clear themselves up.

SPOnG: What would kick-start that – improving economic conditions, or some new thing that gets everybody excited like Project Natal, say?

PM: I think there’s that – you could make a justification that an Xbox 360 with Natal - and everything that it provides, like the whole Xbox Live experience, and Netflix, which I know you don’t have in the UK, but is a very important part of the experience – would make purchasing a console a little bit easier to swallow if you don’t have a lot of disposable cash. But I think the economy has to get better – if it’s a choice of paying the rent or getting a games console, most people are going to pay the rent.

SPOnG: But there’s also the “staying in is the new going out” argument.

PM: The old concept of cocooning. We’ve always actually done better in difficult times – going back, for example, to the first Gulf War, when business went through the roof. In this concept of cocooning, games are a cheap entertainment experience when you spread the cost over the entire 40, 50, 60 hours. But it’s still not food, rent, mortgage, car payment or petrol. We always need to remember that.

Peter Moore on Project Natal:

SPOnG: Are you working on supporting Project Natal, because that surely has some potential applications for sports games?

PM: We have devkits from Microsoft. As you typically do, we’re exploring the technology, and figuring out what we can and cannot do. We’re figuring out whether we can bring our existing franchises to bear – or do we need to build brand-new experiences? We’ve also seen the Motion Controller from Sony, and we’re looking at both with great interest. You’re right: sports has a great role to play with both. You could envisage something as simple as a penalty in FIFA, which you have to step up and take yourself.