Charming Liverpudlian Peter Moore disappeared last year after leading Microsoft's Xbox 360 charge in the marketplace, when he quit to run EA Sports. Now he has re-emerged from his "self-imposed public exile". He's started blogging for EA, and did a launch with Lennox Lewis, Sugar Ray Leonard and Ronald "Winky" Wright (above) at EA Canada in Vancouver.
GamesIndustry.biz has now run an interview, where he talks about the Xbox and the console wars, and the attempt to make EA's sports games easier to play. He says:
We used the analogy of a swimming pool, which people have mocked us for. But it's a good analogy. EA Sports was the deep end, right? You either jumped in, you sank or you swam, or you were intimidated and didn't go near the water. We needed to provide a shallow end. So things like All Play for the Wii, the Freestyle brand, provide that shallow end that you can get in and hopefully move down the pool, which we want you to do. But unless we do that, we're really out of position.
He also makes an interesting comment about PC gaming, in the context of EA's approach to the sports market, saying:
my goal is to grow EA Sports, and I need the PS3 to continue to gain momentum, I've got to readjust my brand on Nintendo Wii, I've got to look at what we do on PC. I'm hung, drawn and quartered in a lot of circles over some of the decisions, but the PC for sports has serious business challenges. We're continuing with FIFA and NHL on the PC because of strong interest and good business opportunities. But our consumers have moved to where they enjoy sports on their widescreen TVs and in their living rooms. It was purely a business decision -- we can't afford to lose money on PC franchises.
Of course, this shift was one of the reasons why Microsoft did the Xbox years ago. As Moore says now: "We saw it as a way of being in the living room...."
