14 DAY TRIAL // Peter Moore has delivered a speech at the MI6 conference in San Francisco, which is centered on the videogame marketing, showing how the EA Sports brand must grow and adapt in order to continue to be significant in the future. His vision for the company is quite broad, focusing on keeping hardcore sports gamers interested while attracting more casual gamers, offering social experiences and expanding from the traditional North American market to a worldwide one.
One of the core ways of doing all of the above is by expanding to the Nintendo Wii, which has a huge install base and very diverse gamers. One of the titles planned for this year for the platform is the new EA Sports Active, positioned as a direct competitor for Wii Fit from Nintendo. Even if Peter Moore believes that “We as a brand drip with testosterone,” Active is set to attract female gamers with its in depth take on fitness and health.
Moore is also saying that EA Sports is adapting to the needs of core gamers, ready to deliver new installments in popular series like FIFA, NBA and Madden, while moving past the concept of only updating graphics and players’ stats. The company is also trying to connect directly with gamers, by acknowledging its fallibility; thus, it has released the now famous Tiger Woods commercial that features the golfer standing on water and playing a shot, which is a riff on a glitch seen in a Tiger Woods videogame, complete with the message “It's not a glitch. He's just that good.”
EA Sports is also interested in providing gateway drug game experiences, especially on the PC, by offering limited feature sports games for all those who “don't call themselves gamers but do call themselves sports fans.” This will be coupled with re-designing the videogames coming from EA Sports in order to make the game more easy to pick up and play without having any previous experience with sports-themed videogames.