What’s this? EA Sports is going to change? Fo’ reals? Well, Peter Moore apparently doesn’t want to rest on his laurels, and for that, I hold him in high esteem. We’ve heard before of his big plans for bringing EA Sports to a worldwide audience, but he’s got even more sweeping transformations in mind. He revealed his ideas to Next Generation in a lengthy interview, which touched on topics like EA’s famous “It’s In The Game” slogan; merchandising and promotional deals; year-round brand extension; and exclusivity. But I was most interested in his thoughts on drawing in sports fans who don’t play sports games:
“What we’ve got to do to grow the market is bring in the football fans, that own high def TVs, that love football, and yet don’t enjoy our games because they see them as too hard. Now the strategy we have here is to maintain our core consumer, but we’ve also got to go out and captivate the masses.
“You do that by having easier menus, more intuitive gameplay. People are intimidated by the controller. They walk past the TV and if you say ‘hey, do you want to play’, they say ‘No, I just don’t want to make a fool of myself’.
“There are too many buttons and triggers and d-pads. We’ve got to break a lot of that down.”
The article also mentions Moore’s respect for what Wii Sports has done; it seems that he wants to do some of that with EA Sports’ games. Of course, he makes sure to note that hardcore sim fans won’t be left behind while the controls are simplified:
“They’ve been with us for decades in some instances. To be able to grow the market you cannot lose that consumer but you need to invite more people in with an experience that is different from the one that the core enjoys and thoroughly enjoys.”
Here’s my take: bully for Moore and EA Sports if they want to widen their audience. There’s certainly a lot of money to be made by enticing non-gaming sports fans to play videogames. Like, you know, your beer-swilling couch potato of a father who hollers at the TV when the Mets blow a 7-game division lead with 17 left to play in the season. But as far as I’m concerned, if they want to do that, they should separate it entirely from their complex sports sims. Bring back Mutant League Football or something, but don’t dumb down my Madden controls just to pander to the casual gamer. What do you guys think?
[via Next Generation — thanks, Justin!]
Contest:
6:35 PM on 03.31.2008
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FUCK THE YANKEES, PUSSIES SHOULD HAVE PLAYED IN THE RAIN. LOL.
[size=5]yes i know baseball isn't played in the rain[/size
Anyway, Mets FTW
And please, PLEASE... make playing defense fun again. Do this for other sports games too, and you have some wieners. Football first though. It needs help.
<3
I agree with you Samit..make something altogether different for them. A Next-Gen Mutant League Football would be attractive alternative.
I'll check back tomorrow to see if this trend continues...
I honestly think that this would drive away a good chunk of their consistent market. How many of the people who buy Madden annually find it too dificult to play? And would anything really be remidied by making it simpler? I highly doubt that moms would flock to Madden because it was easier to run a screen or anything.
The hardcore Madden players would hate the over-simplification and the people who would enjoy the ease of use would get bored with it quickly, negating the chance of future franchise sales. They'd realize that its the same game every year except for certain minor changes and roster updates, which is what the hardcore live for.
Seems Moore like a tangent really...
Mutant League Football would be cool but I think they want to use the Madden video game brand to help push sales as well.
I would hope that they would two control schemes in the game. One that has the computer do most of the work so the casual player only has to push 1 or 2 buttons to play where as players with more experience could make use of an advanced control were all the buttons would be mapped out.
(Surf314, it means that Peter Moore is the derivative of EA Sports with respect to time. Or, in simpler terms, the change in EA Sports at a certain time, t, is given by Peter Moore. Which actually makes sense now that I think about it. >.>
Anyways, I've never been interested in sports games of any kind, and they'd have to practically bundle free cyborg death kittens with Madden to get me to purchase a copy. It's not because they're hard to understand and play, but because I'd rather play games where you're able to do something that isn't found in normal, everyday life. Who would you want be for a day? A Space Marine or a Pro Football player?
Yeah that's it there too hard (nods head) How about some innovation EA? How about pushing technology? Stop reusing the same damn engine EA! It's not about tweeking a game engine each year. It's about starting from the ground up and seeing how you can take a Football game to the next level.
3 words: new Road Rash
Wasn't Mutant League Football's NFL coach, Jerry Glanville?
No those are exactly the kind of people I DON'T want in my games on XBLive...