Peter Moore’s week of headline-generating comments has drawn to a close, and it’s ended on a bold claim indeed. The EA Sports chief has called out iTunes provider Apple and accused its service of ripping the consumer off.
Comparing EA’s digitial distribution plans to Steve Job’s fleecing, the former feline Microsoft man had this to say:
We need to look three years into the future and say it’s going to be a completely different business, because of broadband connections. I am not going to be at the helm of a company that ends up like the music business that refused to stop trying to sell you CDs for £15 because it was a hugely profitable model. And the music consumer says, ‘you know, I don’t want to pay £15 for 12 tracks of which I want two, I don’t want shiny discs anymore’. And so what did the industry do? It started suing its consumers for illegal downloads and, you know, Steve Jobs comes to the rescue to figure out a way to charge you 99 cents or whatever you’re paying in the UK… You’re being ripped off. We’re not going to do that, we’re going to evolve, we’re going to go faster for the consumer, whatever the consumer wants.
Whatever the consumer wants, eh? Can we get a pony? I want a pony, Peter!
Personally, I believe any product with a lower case “i” in front of its name is generally an overpriced con, but EA hardly has enough integrity to go scaling its high horse so quickly. We shall see just how much value for money EA’s DLC provides in the future, though.
