The Popularity of EA Sports Active Delays Grand Slam Tennis

Electronic Arts is one of the biggest publishers on the market but in recent years, its archrival, Activision, is consistently making more money than it, prompting the executives in charge of it and its various labels to come up with new strategies.

One such plan is the push on the hugely popular Nintendo Wii platform, as highlighted by the president of EA Sports, Peter Moore, who said on several occasions that the company needed to do a better job with it.

And so it was with EA Sports Active, the fitness game that really took a lot of people by storm and capitalized with the large demographic, which already bought many copies of Wii Fit. The game is so successful that an add-on in the form of an expansion pack is expected this fall from EA Sports.

But this popularity and the announcement of an expansion this soon after its release took a toll on the development team at EA Sports, as Peter Moore revealed that the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions of Grand Slam Tennis would be delayed indefinitely until the expansion for EA Sports Active was good to go.

With 1.8 million copies of EA Sports Active sold already and still going strong, EA's decision is a bit of a no-brainer. An EA Sports representative did follow up on Moore's statements and revealed that Grand Slam Tennis would be “delayed indefinitely.” Even though that might seem a bit severe, the game will be made eventually, the same rep highlighted.

Overall, this is a natural and extremely profitable move for EA and one that, given the huge user base of the Wii, might be duplicated in other cases in the near future. Hopefully though no big sacrifices will be made in favor of the Wii.