EA says console wars good for gaming
The never ending console war drags on with each new generation, and Electronic Arts thinks that’s a good thing.
In an interview with GameIndustry, COO Peter Moore sat down to discuss how the company is responding to the latest round between Xbox and PlayStation.
“You need powerful companies like Sony and Microsoft to be battling out with each other because it drives investment in their platforms. It drives competition. You want to see Nintendo come back with the Wii U. All in all, it becomes healthy for gamers, for the environment. When you have a runaway winner, that actually has a reverse effect.”
EA themselves have benefited a great deal from console wars of years past. Prior to the battle between Sega and Nintendo, they were primarily a PC developer. Founder Trip Hawkins had viewed consoles as a fad for many years, until Sega began offering them deals too good to pass up. Now it’s the company’s bread and butter. Moore feels that the future of gaming in front of the TV is brighter than ever.
“It feels like there’s a lot of content at the end of this year, and by the way, with everything we’ve now seen for 2015–ourselves included–it feels like it’s going to be a huge year.”
Moore also weighed in on the state of handheld gaming today.
“We were supportive of both of those platforms, but then you’ve got finite resources and you’ve got teams that say, ‘We really think that two or three years from now, these are the platforms that people are going to be consuming games on.’ And you look at the quality of what you can do on phones and tablets… Sometimes strategy is not about what you do but what you don’t do, and you have to make some hard calls when you’ve got only so many people. To my point, we’ve got to be planning for FY 17 and 18. Do you think the Vita and 3DS are going to be around in some shape or fashion by then on a scale level?”
While this seems like bad news, especially for the Vita, EA has never really supported either platform. Only about ten games have been released between the two systems. Instead, they are focusing their attention on their mobile phone and tablet resources. Especially as the hardware continues to outpace what handhelds can offer. Moore says the iPhone 6 could provide his company a big boost now that Apple is realizing how critical games are.
EA is also still bullish on the PC market, despite their less than loved status among players.
“We’ve been making games for the PC platform before Gabe Newell was graduating high school.”
However, the company remains skeptical about VR projects like Morpheus and the Oculus Rift.
“You hope it doesn’t get what I’ll call the Segway effect: incredible technology that kinda looks dorky. Or the Google Glass effect, which is the dork factor that goes with that. And that’s what we have to overcome, because I think the tech is great.”
So there you have it, EA really loves consoles and phones, hates handhelds, and is still being arrogant about PC despite their reputation. Whether this console war will be good for gamers remains to be seen.
You can read the entire interview with GameIndustry here.
Image by Price Shawn