A Sporting Chat With Peter Moore

7/31/2008 6:19 PM | 0 Comments | Page 1 of 7

With NCAA out the door, Madden on the way, and a new direction for EA Sports on the Wii just announced, Peter Moore has been a busy man since he exited Microsoft to become president at EA Sports. During E3, EA Sports announced a new adaptive DNA for NBA Live 09 that will change the game on a daily basis, but how will this be integrated into other EA Sports franchises? What's it like having your Madden cover athlete possibly come out of retirement and play for a different team? What's the deal with this new All-Play series for the Wii? We drop Moore in the Crispy Gamer hot seat, and get you the answers to these questions and more.

Crispy Gamer: It's been a while since you left Microsoft to move to EA Sports. Are you still happy you made the switch?

Peter Moore: Oh sure, I'm happy on a professional and personal level. There's only one job for which I would have left doing what I was doing, and that is to be the president of EA Sports. It's a small industry so there are many people -- as a lot of the executives in this industry attest -- [who] get offered jobs to run companies and publishers or run a studio, and I think I've been offered many of those. I've always turned them down, obviously. But when the first idea was floated, the label structure was being built at EA, and I saw I could bring back my old days of being in sports marketing.

I love sports. My Reebok days in particular and my Sega Sports days. I saw I could have complete control of what is a billion-dollar plus business -- at a studio level and a marketing level -- and make those decisions. And John Riccitello was coming back. And being able to move back down to the Bay Area was very important, because my son never actually moved up to Seattle. He was still at Berkley at the time. And you know, Seattle is a great city, it's a little damp. There's a reason I left northern England, and it wasn't to get back into the rain.

I loved everyone I worked with at Microsoft from Bill Gates down. I was very privileged to spend time with Gates and Ballmer. Robbie Bach is one of my greatest friends ever, and a close family friend, so it was very hard for me to leave. But this was a great opportunity. I think it deploys my skills better than maybe what I was doing up there. I love the idea of finally getting into EA. EA had made a run at me a couple times before and I had determined it wasn't the right time. I never look back at anything, anyway. No sense in doing that. I thoroughly love it.

Crispy Gamer: One of the big announcements you guys made was with your NBA Live franchise with updates on a daily basis.

Moore: Made fresh daily, Billy. Made fresh daily.