A Sporting Chat With Peter Moore

7/31/2008 6:19 PM | 0 Comments | Page 3 of 7

But to answer your question, absolutely. People are constantly connected now. We can update and update and update. With hockey, it's not played every night, but you've got hockey games going on three, four, five times a week...

Crispy Gamer: But even with football... For example, I'm a huge Packers fan, and the Packers' rating in Madden last year was kind of low. Is that something you'd like to see tailored throughout the season? Even with the Giants -- the Giants sucked in the beginning of last year...

Peter Moore: ...the Giants sucked halfway through the season.

Crispy Gamer: Yeah, and that's the team that went on to win the Super Bowl.

Moore: That's a team DNA thing that's often impacted by trades and things that change. That you can do. I don't see us getting down to the player level on Madden. I think it's a different game. But I think we'll start looking at this stuff. The leagues have to approve the data. There's a lot of stuff that goes into this.

Crispy Gamer: Another thing that was brought in a few years back was the ESPN integration with the ESPN Radio updates. Are you planning on pursuing that partnership further than just the Radio elements and news updates?

Moore: We do a ton of stuff with ESPN whether you see it or not. It's a very deep multi-layered relationship that is marketing, integration and statistics. They enjoy the fact that we integrate them fully into the game and we enjoy our marketing relationship with ESPN.com and ESPN The Magazine. They do a tremendous amount of stuff for us. You'll see the Madden machine kick in typically in the next three or four weeks where Bill Simmons will start talking about it.

There's a balance of how much broadcast integration that you want in the game and ESPN and we are very aware of that. You want it in there, but it doesn't need to be intrusive. You're still playing a videogame -- you're not playing the TV rendition of a videogame.

Crispy Gamer: Speaking of the Madden machine kicking in with ESPN, it seems like your cover athlete seems to be all over it.

Moore: Well he's your boy...[laughs]

Crispy Gamer: [laughs] I don't know if he will be my boy or not.

Moore: I think he's going to be your boy. You know it's funny. When we did it, I talked about this a little bit on my blog that even inside of EA it was a little controversial decision. We were very committed to Brett before he actually retired. We were going with Brett.

Crispy Gamer: So this was after last season?

Moore: This was during last season. We have to plan these things to start thinking. We start thinking about who our guy is going to be in the season during the playoffs. You really get a feel of who stood out. It's the 20th anniversary and Favre was on fire. I remember thinking -- I hate to bring this up -- but the final game and the pass that got picked off. Game over. I remember thinking then, "This is the guy we're thinking about. There's no way he's going to retire with his last pass being an interception that kept the Packers out of the Super Bowl." How wrong I was. Well I may have been wrong. We don't know right now.