Electronic Art's man about town, Peter Moore, came under fire the other day during the EB Games Expo where a heckler shouted out, "Origin sucks!" In speaking with The Sydney Morning Herald, Moore brushes off the heckler's remark and explains how Origin is thriving and describes how both it and EA will grow in the future.
This is certainly not the entire interview but merely a few of the more topical questions for those of us here at TGN. Be sure to check out the full interview (Part 1, Part 2)
Is perhaps one of the reasons you might get heckled that people still just see you as a packaged goods distributor, the maker of the latest FIFA game?
Moore: I think it is less that, what we're doing is innovating in areas that are unusual for gamers. The heckle today was about Origin, which is our platform for social, community-based interaction with our fans, delivering games directly to their computers, allowing you to see what your friends are playing at any given time and allowing you to communicate with them. And like any piece of software, and I worked at Microsoft for enough years to say this, you launch software and continue to polish it, upgrade it, get feedback and make it better. That's where we are with Origin. We're only four and a half months in and already over five million people are using it on a daily basis. As I said to the young man who shouted at me, I think two years from now we'll be back down here in Australia and talking about how it really enhances and complements the gaming experience, not gets in the way of it, which I think some people do believe right now.
I asked you about some of the things that you think EA has done right in the last few years, what are some of the things you most need to work on at the moment?
You talk about Origin, I think we continue to work on that, we've got a lot of people in the company that are focused on that. Battlefield 3 will be the first real test of the stability of Origin. And that's why we did the beta. We're not afraid. Betas are always risky things because your painting is only half painted, you don't quite know where it will finish up, but you show people for free before it's finished and people criticise. We needed to put Battlefield 3 out in an open beta and are happy we did so, but it's a bit of a challenge when people who are not used to playing unfinished software see bugs and see servers crashing because we are load balancing around. I think we won't need to do it again once we have learned these lessons but I'd say that getting more direct to consumers faster so we can have this daily interaction is one of our core strategies.
The three tenants we go by now are platform, IP and talent. Those are the three things as a company that we're focused on. Building our own platform and interacting with powerful platforms that are out there, the Microsofts, Sonys, Nintendos, Facebooks, Google, etc. Continuing to build what we believe is the world's best IP, set of brands, in interactive entertainment. Recently it's been done by mergers and acquisitions, in particular PopCap of course. Not being afraid to make a big investment in what we think is an incredible space that continues to grow every day. And then talent. The interesting thing Jason about our business is I look at the talent in even the four years I've been at EA that we've started to change. Yes, we've still got thousands of people whose job it is to develop a game and hard-code that game on a disc and deliver that disc, but where we're adding people and where we're really growing the business is network engineers, digital business analysts, and making sure we're ready for this direct-to-the-consumer future that the company is investing in. But at the same time making sure that we have great creative people, making sure that we have the world's best developers of big, big games of which we're doing less of, you've heard (EA CEO) John Riccitiello talk a lot about less is more. And not disappointing our shareholders, which of course is important as well.
What do you think are the most significant trends in the industry right now, perhaps the things that keep you up at night?
Well, it's both exciting and challenging, but it's the definition of who is a gamer. The presentation I just did showed a slide that in 2001, just 10 years ago, there was probably 200 million gamers, primarily in the Western world. We then fast forward to where we are today in 2011, we think there's about one and a half billion people playing games of some shape or size, whether it's on their mobile phones, or on tablets, or on their PCs or consoles. We're looking at 2015 and I was asking the crowd, if we connect all these platforms, we've got a game experience for every platform, for every taste, for every wallet, for everybody's time constraints, we've got an experience for you, is there going to be three billion people who are gamers by 2015 because of the ubiquity of devices that we are all enjoying around the world. So that was the open-ended question that I posed to the audience. It's both a huge opportunity and a major challenge in capital investment, finding resources and talent. FIFA is a great example. Five years ago we were developing FIFA really for three platforms. Now we go out on 11 platforms this year with FIFA 12.
Moore: I think it is less that, what we're doing is innovating in areas that are unusual for gamers. The heckle today was about Origin, which is our platform for social, community-based interaction with our fans, delivering games directly to their computers, allowing you to see what your friends are playing at any given time and allowing you to communicate with them. And like any piece of software, and I worked at Microsoft for enough years to say this, you launch software and continue to polish it, upgrade it, get feedback and make it better. That's where we are with Origin. We're only four and a half months in and already over five million people are using it on a daily basis. As I said to the young man who shouted at me, I think two years from now we'll be back down here in Australia and talking about how it really enhances and complements the gaming experience, not gets in the way of it, which I think some people do believe right now.
I asked you about some of the things that you think EA has done right in the last few years, what are some of the things you most need to work on at the moment?
You talk about Origin, I think we continue to work on that, we've got a lot of people in the company that are focused on that. Battlefield 3 will be the first real test of the stability of Origin. And that's why we did the beta. We're not afraid. Betas are always risky things because your painting is only half painted, you don't quite know where it will finish up, but you show people for free before it's finished and people criticise. We needed to put Battlefield 3 out in an open beta and are happy we did so, but it's a bit of a challenge when people who are not used to playing unfinished software see bugs and see servers crashing because we are load balancing around. I think we won't need to do it again once we have learned these lessons but I'd say that getting more direct to consumers faster so we can have this daily interaction is one of our core strategies.
The three tenants we go by now are platform, IP and talent. Those are the three things as a company that we're focused on. Building our own platform and interacting with powerful platforms that are out there, the Microsofts, Sonys, Nintendos, Facebooks, Google, etc. Continuing to build what we believe is the world's best IP, set of brands, in interactive entertainment. Recently it's been done by mergers and acquisitions, in particular PopCap of course. Not being afraid to make a big investment in what we think is an incredible space that continues to grow every day. And then talent. The interesting thing Jason about our business is I look at the talent in even the four years I've been at EA that we've started to change. Yes, we've still got thousands of people whose job it is to develop a game and hard-code that game on a disc and deliver that disc, but where we're adding people and where we're really growing the business is network engineers, digital business analysts, and making sure we're ready for this direct-to-the-consumer future that the company is investing in. But at the same time making sure that we have great creative people, making sure that we have the world's best developers of big, big games of which we're doing less of, you've heard (EA CEO) John Riccitiello talk a lot about less is more. And not disappointing our shareholders, which of course is important as well.
What do you think are the most significant trends in the industry right now, perhaps the things that keep you up at night?
Well, it's both exciting and challenging, but it's the definition of who is a gamer. The presentation I just did showed a slide that in 2001, just 10 years ago, there was probably 200 million gamers, primarily in the Western world. We then fast forward to where we are today in 2011, we think there's about one and a half billion people playing games of some shape or size, whether it's on their mobile phones, or on tablets, or on their PCs or consoles. We're looking at 2015 and I was asking the crowd, if we connect all these platforms, we've got a game experience for every platform, for every taste, for every wallet, for everybody's time constraints, we've got an experience for you, is there going to be three billion people who are gamers by 2015 because of the ubiquity of devices that we are all enjoying around the world. So that was the open-ended question that I posed to the audience. It's both a huge opportunity and a major challenge in capital investment, finding resources and talent. FIFA is a great example. Five years ago we were developing FIFA really for three platforms. Now we go out on 11 platforms this year with FIFA 12.
This is certainly not the entire interview but merely a few of the more topical questions for those of us here at TGN. Be sure to check out the full interview (Part 1, Part 2)
Comment