16 MCV 15/10/10
MCV INTERVIEW PETER MOORE, EA SPORTS
11 plus
FIFA 11 kicked off with incredible success two weeks ago – but it’s just part of an ongoing story that will see the game change and grow into something that can’t be described or constrained by years and numbers. EA Sports boss Peter Moore explains the game plan to Dave Roberts…
IT WOULD BE understandable if staunch Liverpool fan and EA Sports boss Peter Moore isn’t desperately keen to talk football. It’s the Tuesday after his beloved Reds have lost at home to Blackpool (hot on the heels of a defeat to, wait for it, Northampton in the Carling Cup). The papers are full of the Anfield crisis. So, maybe he’d prefer to chat about NFL, the NBA. Golf, perhaps. The weather, even. Tough. Because Liverpool hitting their Blackpool rock bottom coincided with EA Sports’ FIFA franchise hitting new heights. FIFA 11 was released on September 28th in the US and October 1st in Europe, and by October 2nd it sold 2.6 million units, 29 per cent up on last year, and there were 11.3 million online game sessions. Moore purrs: “That’s unprecedented. And this isn’t a game that took years and years to develop, like Halo: Reach, this is something the team continues to crank out on an annual basis. We knew we would be up, but we were pleasantly surprised at how much we were up, especially in a challenging market right now. These are just stunning numbers.” They’re also a pretty emphatic answer to the question of what happens to FIFA when there’s a World Cup version of the game crammed into the schedule. “I wondered that as well, because this is my first go round in a World Cup year. I thought maybe our customers could get all footballed out. But my team were very confident. They said that the World Cup game introduces the franchise to an even bigger slice of the mass market. They use it as an on-ramp to a full blown FIFA.
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“We can check all the way back to the Mexico World Cup in ’86 and see the pattern: ship a World Cup game, watch sales of the main game go up a few months later.” Another World Cup effect might be
Moore’s rather surprising suggestion that the US could be FIFA 11’s most successful territory. “The UK’s got off to a great start but the US has got good legs and the strong showing from the US team at the World Cup is helping. The numbers were close last year and I think that’s a pretty interesting side bet this year.”
MOORE PRAISE FIFA 11 is also another critical hit. There may not have been a 29 per cent hike in review scores, but even if it’s a plateau, then it’s flattening out in a good place. Moore is certainly happy – with the odd caveat: “I watch quality like a hawk and jump on all the feedback. And without calling out names there are a couple of places that I care about which have ranked the game lower than last year, which surprised and disappointed me. We take reviews very much to heart.” Generally though, he’s been pleased
The sticky factor that comes from online helps FIFA enormously. That’s the challenge PES faces right now. Peter Moore, EA Sports
with the reaction and picks out some of the elements that have garnered praise: “We’ve obviously added features like Personality Plus, 11 vs 11, playing as the goalkeeper, and so on. But just as importantly the team has focused on polishing existing elements.
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“The FIFA team deserve a lot of praise. But they’re an amazing bunch when it comes to self-deprecation, almost self- flagellation. When they do their presentations, they say ‘Here are the things we like, and here are the 50 things we want to improve and the 50 things we wish we could have done’. “I love that about them, but I also think they should cut themselves some slack, because let’s face it they’ve done a fantastic job.” The resurrection of FIFA, even though it was seeded before his arrival has been at or
close to the top of Moore’s to do list since he arrived at EA Sports. He and the team were determined to ramp up quality and certain that increased commercial success would follow. Moore generously credits a “ballsy” decision to build a new engine five or so
years ago as the starting point but has subsequently overseen a culture that demands investment in the people, facilities and technology – and a culture that pays more attention to its critics and customers than ever before.
THE EVOLUTION
A by-product of all this has been a sustained and reasonably emphatic superiority over FIFA’s great rival franchise, Pro Evo – the one that used to be considered the connoisseurs’ choice. Moore rejects the idea that there is now clear green grass between the two, and obviously retains a healthy respect for the brand. “Our FIFA dev team certainly never thinks of them as being in the rear view mirror. Seabass [PES exec producer Shingo Takatsuka] and the team in Japan are an excellent outfit and they were a really strong leader in this space just
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