There’s ‘Moore’ soundbites (geddit) on Industry Gamers.

Speaking to IndustryGamers, the former Sega executive explained a misunderstanding is behind the widespread belief that he was the one to pull the trigger – or rather, “make the call”.

“The idea of ‘making the call’ came out of an interview with Keith Stuart of The Guardian – when I said making the call, I was actually referring to the telephone call,” he explained.

“He interpreted that as making the decision, and I was very much a part of the decision, but it certainly wasn’t just me telling the Japanese team that we need to get out of the console business.”

Moore explained that a number of Sega executives from offices around the world had agreed to discontinue the Dreamcast, but it fell to him to tell the press.

“My comment about making the call was that I had to announce – with several hundred journalists on the call, and I shall never forget it – that we were moving on and will not be selling hardware anymore and will be disposing of existing inventory as we transition to third-party publishing,” he said.

As for why the Dreamcast folded, Moore was blunt.

“It’s a difficult early period when you’re selling hardware because you’re not making a lot of money, and in some instances you’re losing money. We need to build an installed base and we just couldn’t get there,” he said.

After 15 years as one of two or three major players on the console hardware scene, Sega’s discontinuation of the Dreamcast in 2011 marked its exit from the ranks of platform holders. Despite its failure to sell, many gamers nurture a soft-spot for the Dreamcast, which boasted many forward-thinking features like online connectivity, DLC, and in-game voice chat. Working consoles, replacement parts and games are hotly pursued by collectors, and homebrew developers are still producing games and ports for the system

“The packaged goods business, while still flourishing and strong, eventually – as we’ve seen in music and movies – will go to the cloud,” Moore told IndustryGamers.

“It will go digital and we’ll be delivering games from the cloud and delivering games directly to hard drives and we’re still going to sell a lot of discs for the foreseeable future. But eventually, physical media will diminish as the core part of how gamers get their content.”

Asked whether the industry would see closures during this period, Moore agreed some companies would fold rather than adapt.

“But I think we always see that with every transition. Publishers either make it through or they don’t – transitions are hard because revenue slows down and costs speed up,” he said.

“The companies that have prepared themselves and have diversified their offerings to chase the consumer wherever they want to play games are the companies that will succeed and thrive and flourish. Companies that continue to rely on the old model as the model changes before our eyes, unless they change their ways and invest in the future those companies eventually will die off. No two ways about it.”

The executive is pretty certain that EA will be one of the survivors.

“We might be the company that sells the last disc. But by then we’ll also be doing several billions of dollars in digital and direct to consumer revenues – however digital is going to be delivered,” he said.

“What I love about being here is we’re purely focused on content. We’re very platform agnostic – I’m kind of fond of saying that if it’s got a button and a screen and you can put inputs into it, it’s a games machine.

“We’ve seen that from the Kindle all the way to the browser, and EA is always eager to look at opportunities to bring our content to people who want to play games on machines; I can’t think of a company right now that has more experiences across platforms than EA.

“I think the excitement and freedom that provides you to be able to talk to the gamer in a way that the gamer simply says, ‘I’m playing games on this device, and I want EA games,’ and it’s our job to deliver them.”

There’s plenty of interest in the full interview through the link above.

Thanks, GoNintendo.

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Speaking in an interview with IndustryGamers, Moore said that while it’s still a bit early to tell, once the firm has a look at figures for its fiscal year, it will find that it did indeed steal some of the market share.

“I’m not sure that we didn’t steal any share,” he said. “It’s early days and we’re only a month in – we feel very good about it. Two entities have benefited from Call of Duty and Battlefield being on the market: gamers and the industry. Together we’ve grown the genre enormously. 10 million sold in and 5 million sold through doesn’t come out of nowhere – if we haven’t gained share, that means in the first week we’ve added 5 million new FPS gamers.

“I think when the dust fully settles, maybe when we’re looking at this at the end of our fiscal year [on March 31] we’ll do an analysis and I think we will have taken share. I don’t think there’s any doubt about that, unless everything BF3 sells is just incremental.

“I’m more focused on how we’ve done by our gamer and consumers, and yes many of them bought both games undoubtedly. Have our retail partners enjoyed this? Absolutely. And does this help push the game industry to the front pages of newspapers? You bet it does. Go look at USA Today, go look at The New York Times – the big entertainment blockbusters this year are not movies, they’re video games. Call of Duty and Battlefield have done that.”

IG notes that the interview was conducted before Black Friday sales were figured, and since then, EA has announced that Battlefield 3′s sell through numbers have reached 8 million.

While newer figures for MW3 haven’t been released, analysts predict it will hit 25 million sold.

- EA COO Peter Moore speaking to Famitsu about the Wii U, as reported by Cub3d. The publisher has been flagged in rumours about the Wii U’s potentially third party digital offering.

“Like any piece of software, you launch and continue to polish it, upgrade it, get feedback and make it better. That’s where we are with Origin,” Moore told Screenplay.

“We’re only four and a half months in and already over five million people are using it on a daily basis.”

Asked what he considers to be EA’s biggest challenge at the moment, Moore hinted he considers nailing Origin a top priority.

“We’ve got a lot of people in the company that are focused on that. Battlefield 3 will be the first real test of the stability of Origin,” he said.

“And that’s why we did the beta. We’re not afraid. Betas are always risky things because your painting is only half painted, you don’t quite know where it will finish up, but you show people for free before it’s finished and people criticise.”

The executive commented that the Battlefield 3 and Origin beta was “a bit of a challenge” when players blamed software and reacted badly to crashes due to back-end testing and changes, but values the experience anyway.

“I’d say that getting more direct to consumers faster so we can have this daily interaction is one of our core strategies,” he added.

Origin is just part of EA’s strategy to adapt to an era in which traditional publishing models are rapidly losing relevancy.

“I think what we have done is redefine what a publisher in interactive entertainment means in the modern era. We’re closer now when we look at the industry to being a peer of a Facebook, or a Google, or even an Amazon, or in our world a Comcast, which is a major distributor of content by cable, than we are a publisher of video game discs sold through retail,” Moore said.

“Yes, we still do that, we do a lot of that, we do billions of dollars worth of that, but our metamorphosis from being a packaged goods company to a true internet-focused service organisation that provides game experiences, not just on launch day and then move onto something else, but 365 days a year.

“It’s been painful for a few years because we’ve made massive investments with no revenue attached in infrastructure: billing systems, back-end hardware, server farms all over the world. But as we stand here today and interestingly, as I see the stock at a 52 week high this afternoon, I think the message is starting to come through that the company that is emerging from an investment period still with great brands and still doing very well in the old business of selling discs, as you’ve seen with our numbers recently, but well positioned for the new future whether it’s on Facebook, whether it’s in iOS, whether it is in the Amazons of this world, whether it is streaming, whether it is free or whether the game is $60.”

EA’s measure of success has changed, too; it can no longer be satisfied with ruling rh holiday season roost.

“It would be very difficult to track EA’s number of ‘units sold’ when we’re so powerful now on Facebook. How does one equate for the 67 million people in two months that are now playing The Sims Social?” Moore said, challenging the assumption that EA is less successful than in the past.

“In the old days five years ago when you counted the number of discs we sold, we were holding our own nicely, but I think it is difficult now because the industry is so fragmented for companies to have massive market shares across all platforms.

“We know we’re the number one console publisher, although maybe our share certainly on a global basis is not anywhere near 25 percent, it’s probably in the upper teens depending on which month.

“We’re number one on PC, we’re number one on tablets, we’re number one in mobile, we’re number two in the world on social platforms. It’s pretty darn good. There’s no other company in the world that can look at all of those different platforms and be anywhere close to the position that we are in right now.

“In 2001, just 10 years ago, there was probably 200 million gamers, primarily in the Western world. We then fast forward to where we are today in 2011, we think there’s about one and a half billion people playing games of some shape or size, whether it’s on their mobile phones, or on tablets, or on their PCs or consoles.

“We’re looking at 2015 and I was asking the crowd, if we connect all these platforms, we’ve got a game experience for every platform, for every taste, for every wallet, for everybody’s time constraints, we’ve got an experience for you, is there going to be three billion people who are gamers by 2015 because of the ubiquity of devices that we are all enjoying around the world.”

Thanks, GoNintendo.

Thanks, GameSpot!

“I’m not sure we’re taking them on; we’re a great compliment to that business,” EA COO Peter Moore told GamesIndustry of the supposed “rivalry” between the fledgling Origin and Steam.

The executive’s comments were echoed by EA Europe leader Jens Uwe Intat.

“I don’t even know if Steam Vs. Origin is a proper battle,” he said. “There’s a space for Steam, there’s a space for Origin, there’s a space for third party retailers. Both pure retailers and traditional retailers that are entering the digital distribution space.

“I think in that space that competition will create superior experiences for the consumer and there’s space for more than one player.

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying it’s not a competitor to Steam, I’m just saying that there’s more people out there than just Steam and Origin.”

Intat added that publishers both work with and in rivalry to other companies all the time.

“Every first party manufacturer is a partner of ours when we’re distributing their product, and a competitor of ours with their own software. I think, as an industry, we’re pretty good at competing and co-operating at the same time,” he said.

Both Moore and Intat said Origin owes its existence to EA’s need to interface directly with the customer, and reiterated that Steam’s policy against such interactions as the motivation the removal of some of its games from Valve’s service.

Asked about Origin last week, Valve’s Gabe Newell had nothing bad to say, either.

According to The Globe and Mail, (via Yahoo Sports), we should all tip our proverbial and actual hats to Lexi Peters, a 14-year-old girl from Buffalo, NY.

Lexi  wrote a letter to EA’s Peter Moore asking why there wasn’t an option to create a female character in the game for female hockey fans, which she felt was “unfair to women and girl hockey players around the world.”

Moore passed the letter over to the executive producer of the NHL series, David Littman. The letter was a bit of a wake-up call for the firm, which realized that there are indeed females out there who enjoy hockey, and it would be pertinent if they were represented in the series as well.

So, for the first time ever in the game series, female character creation is present with NHL 12, and to further demonstrate how serious the firm took the matter, EA Sports had Lexi send in photos of herself so that her likeness could be the default female character in the game.

NHL 12 was released in Europe on September 9.

Thanks, GayGamer.

Moore, who once worked with the NBA 2K team, told IndustryGamers that now 2K Sports has dropped its hockey series, NBA 2K represents “probably 80 percent of their portfolio from a unit basis and a revenue basis” – and is presumably built to a level of quality which reflects that investment.

“It’s a great game, but we’re not walking off the court crying here,” Moore said. “We took a year off so that we can focus on building the quality that it needs to be.

“We’re focused on building a great game for next year. The team has got the time to be able to look at everything that we need to do to make sure that we bring quality back up and be competitive.”

“We’re not just going to walk away from it; we’ve got a very, very talented team that’s already got stuff up and running even though it won’t ship this year, it’ll go next year. So we’ll be back.”

Brave words, but Moore concedes it may take EA Sports some time to claw back market share after leaving 2K to dominate for a whole year.

“It’ll take a while to get back, yeah. It’ll take us a few years maybe, but if that’s what it takes, that’s what it’ll be,” he said.

“We’re not a short term player. It’s not going to happen overnight, but we’ll sit here three, four years from now and hopefully we’ll be talking about what a great battle NBA 14 or 15 is versus their 14 or 15.”

EA Sports’ basketball sim series, NBA Live, was rebranded as NBA Elite 11 before being cancelled.

“It’s less about being second place. This is about taking market share,” the executive told Gamespot of Battlefield 3′s release against Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.

“This is really about a long-term strategy in what we think is a very important shooter segment that has driven over the last few years multiple billions of dollars of revenue into the industry.

“If you look at last year, you might argue that Call of Duty took maybe 90 percent of the market share. We think we can knock that down to 70 percent this year.

“We don’t have to outsell Call of Duty to have a very successful year. This is a long-term strategy to be a major player, if not ultimately a dominant player in this industry. But it starts this year.”

Moore pointed to FIFA’s eventual rise to prominence alongside Pro Evolution Soccer as an example of the path EA means to take with shooters like Battlefield, Medal of Honor and Crysis.

Continuing the theme of the the mega-publisher’s not needing to dominate to succeed, the former EA Sports head said the company is committed to its EA Partners program despite low profit margins.

“We’ve got a very vibrant ecosystem and we’re always scouring the world for content in development that we really like, that we can make an investment in, help that developer get it over the finish line, and provide them a publishing engine,” he said, comparing EAP to the old EA Distribution system.

“I don’t know how many years the company has been doing this, but it’s something we’re very proud of. You have the big hits, the Rock Band type thing or Kingdoms of Amalur, and then we’ve got stuff we enjoy bringing to market.

“We work with developers we like, and we work with IP we think is very interesting. And we’re a big company that can put that stuff in the mix pretty easily and get after it.

“It’s not as high a margin as something we develop ourselves, but that’s not really the point. I think we have an obligation at times to give some of these great developers an outlet, and that’s something we need to do.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Moore commented on the decline of packaged sales, the industry’s emphasis on blockbusters, the ognoing difficulties between EA and Steam, and games as services. Hit the link above for the whole thing.

Thanks, IndustryGamers.

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“Look, you saw Battlefield – how much better could this stuff look at some point?” the newly-promoted executive told IndustryGamers.

“There’s a point of diminishing returns. I don’t even know if there’s anything better than 1080p.”

Moore commented that graphical performance is no longer the be all and end all in the industry’s infancy.

“Now it’s about interfaces. Now it’s about building a community in a rich, powerful, way. And now it’s about, ‘What is the way we can control the game?’ You’ve seen that with Move, you’ve seen it with Wii MotionPlus more recently, and you’ve certainly seen it with Kinect,” he said.

The industry veteran argued that Nintendo’s Wii U isn’t the “transitional” half-generation leap many critics have assumed, and predicted the tablet controller could be as important a game-changer as the WiiMote.

“Nintendo’s job, quite frankly, is to build a better mousetrap with regards to the way that we use the controller,” he said

“So I don’t know what Xbox and PlayStation’s plans for their next platforms are, but it’s not going to be hanging on graphic fidelity. I guarantee you that.”

In line with EA’s digital push, Moore also commented that Nintendo’s new focus on online features is a “relief” to the publisher.

Thanks, IGN.

Former EA Sports head Peter Moore has been promoted to COO of the publisher, while Frank Gibeau, once EA Games boss, will now take up a new position as head of EA Labels.

Sub-label EA Interactive, which is made up of Playfish, Pogo, EA Mobile, Hasbro, online interests and shortly PopCap, also has a new boss, in Barry Cottle. Cottle has served as EA Mobile’s senior VP and general manager among other roles.

EA Labels itself is seeing a bit of a change up, with Mass Effect and Dragon Age developer BioWare making the jump from EA Games studio to a label in and of itself. It joins EA Games, EA Sports and EA Play.

Writing on the company’s news blog, CEO John Riccitiello said the changes are part of EA’s first restructuring since it formed the current label divisions in 2007.

“I think it’s a great reflection on EA that we are able to tap so much world-class leadership from within our own ranks. The depth of talent and leadership in this company is inspiring,” he commented.

“The people who succeed here are the ones who map their creative vision over a deep understanding of what our consumers want. Our Label structure reflects that strategy. It creates a close partnership between developers and product marketers that connects the creative process to our consumers.”

Riccitiello took the time to reflect on EA’s massive turn around since implementing the labels structure, commenting that the company is now “switching from defense to offense”.

Thanks, IndustryGamers.

“This is a program that’s additive and supplementary to your core experience,” said Moore in an interview with GI.biz. “It’s not something that, if you don’t subscribe to it, all of a sudden is less than optimal. We are very clear on that. There are people who will just say, ‘Look, I don’t believe in paying extra for content or access,’ and that’s perfectly fine, but my e-mail box over the last few years has been full of requests saying, ‘How do I get the game early. I spend a lot of money with you guys, how can I get a discount like I can with some other kind of, if you will, retailer – and I’m putting quotes around that.

“The program will continue to evolve over the years as we learn more about what the consumer wants. Every time you ask for money for something there’s going to be resistance, but it’s important that everybody understands that this is aimed at the core consumer

“The idea is that we’re allowing people early access to the game, but the focus then is that you still need to go to retail. We’re partnering with retailers to drive this program, so we see it as very complementary to the usual process. We have very strong relationships with retailers and that’s not going to change. The digital element of what we do has been strong, and you’ve seen John Riccitiello talking about a billion dollar digital business, but most of our business starts with the purchase of a disc at retail, and this is no different. All of this comes off a disc, and that disc is bought at retail.”

EA announced Season Pass earlier today.

Speaking in an interview with IGN at E3, Moore said EA’s goal with the games as a service business model, is to offer customers something less expensive with more content.

“Software as a service, SAAS as they call it, is the future,” he said. “Software that’s not on a floppy disk or a disc or some form of cartridge, that is the key. Once you have software as a service, games as a service becomes important as well. Having EA Sports as a service rather than individual, discreet purchases becomes important to us. How do I provide all of my portfolio and franchises to you as a service as software is usually delivered rather than hoping you go to a store and buy my game instead of the game next to it on the shelf? That is the NetFlix model. That is any online subscription model.

“Ultimately our industry has got to move towards being able to build services, and we have a unique situation at EA Sports where we’re really the only true ‘brand’  in video games. There are publishers like ourselves, Activision, and Ubisoft, you can argue they’re brands, but I’m not sure if you buy an EA game, for example, you buy a game that happens to be published by EA. Our research shows people will be an EA Sports game. EA Sports is a brand they trust, and so what we’ve got to be able to do is how do we tie that all together? That’s what I was talking about, this concept of a service, of subscription models, and of being able to go direct to consumer.

“If you’re our average guy, maybe you buy two or three games a year. That’s $180. Can I provide you with a service that’s less expensive, that provides you with more content? Those are the models that all software companies look at and we’re no different.”

You can read the entire interview through the link.

Speaking in an interview with IGN during E3, Moore said he thinks Nintendo has finally recognized that the future is “connected.”

“We’re a long way away from [Wii U] going live, but their intentions are good,” he said. “They recognize they fell behind a little bit with the Wii at the same time Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 are accelerating by the tens of millions of users. You weren’t getting that level of interaction and engagement from Wii consumers.

“Nintendo has recognized the future is connected. The future is online. The future is about building powerful communities. They know they have to do that, and certainly with the conversations I’ve been in with them I’m very optimistic. We all need to help them, which we’re all willing to do. When I say “we” I mean developers and publishers bringing their best practices.

“I think it would be great to have three, powerful online game networks going at it with each other.”

Moore also said he is fine with Nintendo catering to both the hardcore and casual audiences, because in the end, it makes people from all walks of life and tastes purchase games.

“You’d like to think they’ll continue to bring in a broader audience,” he offered. “What the Wii did was create a whole new class of gamers. Whether it was through interactive fitness with the Wii balance board or Wii Fit, it created a bunch of people that have never seen themselves as a console owner before. With the intuitiveness of the device, people from 9 to 90 started to play video games. That helped democratized gaming on top of the core.

“You’d like to think that whatever they do more people play games because of them rather than the same number of people that play games and have to make hard choices between a Wii U, PlayStation 3 or 4, and Xbox 360 or ‘Xbox 720.’

“I would rather that we continue to grow our business horizontally than deepen our business vertically. I’ll take both, though.”

Wii U is slated for release sometime after April 2012.

Speaking in an interview with Gamasutra, Moore said it was “very pleasing” to see how this connectivity is becoming more mainstream how it has changed “business models to react to consumer demands.”

Moore said EA is planning on integrating more online and social aspects into EA titles and plans to make the games “less discrete, standalone experiences and more like services.”

“Madden shouldn’t be a place you buy, it should be a place you go,” he said. “We look at our research and see, there are 130, 140 million fans of the NFL in America. What do we need to do to bring a Madden experience to them? It could be as simple as a three-minute experience every day, or as complex as playing Franchise Mode, or every stop in between.

“Now everyone who’s a sports fan who has a device is a consumer. The goal ultimately is to move those folks further along the value chain, and that’s what we’re intending to do. It’s a double-edged sword: It’s a more fragmented marketplace, but there are more gamers than ever before. It’s a broad swath of experiences and a great opportunity to grow our business.

“There’s a massive humanity that supports this tribal thing called soccer out there, and how do we bring that to life within the video game experience? It’s a quantum leap in the virtualization of the passion I have for the game, more than just for the video game.”

You can read the entire interview through the link.

Instead, Moore said that it was just a case of “delayed purchases.”

“I felt bad for Sony; we tried to help Sony. We really tried to focus on ‘There but for the grace of God go many of us’,” he told Kotaku at E3.

“I think it’s just delayed purchases. You’re still going to buy TPC Boston eventually,” he added, mentioning a golf course that’ll be available as DLC for Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11.

“I think we all learned some hard lessons.”

Moore added that multiplayer figures are back to healthy levels with his label’s games.

PSN went down in mid-April due to an external intrusion.

Speaking with Bloomberg, EA Sports president Peter Moore told the financial new outlet that EA is currently working with the league as well as the NFL Players Association to “minimize the potential impact of a lockout-shortened season,” on sales of EA Sports’ NFL-developed games.

Moore estimated the loss could be as low as $70 million or as high as $80 million with the lockout’s impact hitting 35 percent of revenue, which is stark contrast to the potential loss of $165 million analysts predicted in the New York Post. Analyst Michael Pachter believes the impact could go as high as 50 percent of the sales Madden NFL.

“You do get concerned that the attention of sports fans goes elsewhere,” Moore said. “People not only get disenchanted, they get angry.”

Stock prices for Electronic Arts fell 63 cents, or 2.7 percent, to $22.72 yesterday on Nasdaq, yet shares in the firm are up 39 percent for the year.

“FIFA has the great fortune of being invited to all the VIP parties,” EA Sports’ senior vice president of worldwide development Andrew Wilson teased when Eurogamer asked him whether FIFA will be a Wii U launch title.

When asked about how FIFA plans to make use of Wii U’s innovative new controller, Wilson said.

“This concept of cleaning up everything you see on the big screen and putting all that here [on the controller screen], is an interesting proposition.”

“We don’t have that problem solved, but the opportunity to change the way you interact with a game based on moving everything from the HUD to here, is interesting.”

“The radar can go there. You could trigger wing play. You could play an offside trap here. There are a whole bunch of things you could do here that before, you had to remember a two-button combination or a d-pad combination, or you had to see it represented up on a screen, which meant if anyone else was watching they saw it.”

EA Boss John Riccitiello, who pledged the publisher’s support for the new console during Nintendo’spress conference, commented that the Wii U version of FIFA won’t include gimmicky features that utilize the console’s unique new features just for the sake of it.

“Between now and when that launches, we’ll be working diligently to make sure it adds value, that it’s not a gimmick, but it truly adds value,” he said.

“As a FIFA gamer, if I could have touch-screen controls that said wing play, offside trap, push forward, pull back – all these things that no longer were assigned to a d-pad – I would feel pretty good about it.”

“I’m sure we’re going to do more than that, but as the lowest common denominator, that would be pretty cool. That would change the way I play.”

The HD-capable Wii U has a unique controller with an in-built touch-screen allowing it to display content sent wirelessly from the console, and is slated to release in 2012.

So, even if there isn’t any football this year, Madden NFL 12 will still be released.

“We’ll be shipping this year, regardless of what the labor issues are, whether they’re resolved or not,” Moore said during an EA Sports event in San Francisco.

“Madden 12 will be shipping on August 30th 2011, regardless of what happens with the league itself.”

At least there will be football of some sort, then.

You can vote on who will be featured on the cover this year, still.

Currently, Adrian Peterson is beating Michael Vick in their respective bracket, and Peyton Hills is ahead of Asron Rodgers. The winner of each bracket will be revealed on April 18, with the public able to vote between the two winners after that.

Thanks, Joystiq.

“Today we’re looking at a seamless experience across all our franchises,” the EA Sports president said, speaking at the MI6 conference in San Francisco, as reported by Joystiq, referring to persistant, cloud-based player profiles.

“Regardless of where you are, what platform you have, what game you’re playing, that you’re constantly connected.”

Moore said this connectivity, which recognises the same player identity across multiple titles, will reward players for playing various EA games.

“Their presence there gets its achievements and carries them from iteration to iteration,”he said.

“It’s no longer ‘buy Madden 11 and then buy Madden 12 and start from scratch,’ it is ‘take everything that you’ve done and migrate it and move it along.’”

EA’s plans go further than taking some of the frustration out of annual iterations.

“This is how we at EA Sports individualize and personalize this as the future of our brand,” Moore said, “And ultimately the future of what Electronic Arts as a whole is going to do across all of its titles.”

EA has already dabbled in this area with its EA Profiles. Registering a new copy of Dead Space 2 unlocks special items in Dragon Age 2, while flagging both games nets rewards in Facebook game Dragon Age: Legends. Dragon Age uses player’s EA profiles to push character data out to the BioWare Social Network. Need for Speed’s Autolog social network is available on mobile devices.

EA head John Riccitiello has said in the past that the publisher wants to push its social networks as a platform.

EA’s Sports Peter Moore has been talking boxing on his blog, specifically to ask the question, “Is boxing dead?”

Moore admitted it’s “clearly not the cultural fixture it once was,” and is facing “declining interest (and) a lack of bona fide superstars,” however he did go on to add, “Let me be clear, boxing’s not dead.”

Speaking in relation to EA’s new Fight Night Champion title, Moore said EA “needed to be disruptive with the game design to energize the franchise,” which he says led to a decision 18 months ago to take a chance at something “more risky,” by which he means the game’s Champion Mode.

Moore said the team instead turned its attention to the silver screen, with movies such as Raging Bull used as an inspiration.

Fight Night Champion hits PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on March 1.

Peter Moore, president of EA Sports, is set to keynote the 2011 GameSupply Summit in Burbank, California, with a presentation titled “Digital Play – What’s the Future” – a topic the success of EA’s Online Pass system no doubt qualifies the man to speak on.

IndustryGamers reports that Moore’s speech will focus on how to turn digital games into money-makers.

Moore will comment on the future of retail as the games industry adopts digital distribution, as well as various methods of making games pay – free to play, micro-transactions, and subscription models.

GameSupply Conference Chairman Devendra Mishra described Moore as “one of the most dynamic and successful executives in the video game industry today”.

The summit, which is scheduled for February 2, is a collaborative effort of the Entertainment Merchants Association and the Media & Entertainment Services Alliance.

Thanks, GoNintendo. Photo via The Telegraph.

EA Sports is in the process of making last year’s game – NBA Live 10 – relevant for players looking to the upcoming NBA season. The latest step: announcing details of a update scheduled for October 20.

From the EA Sports community site:

- All rosters have been updated to reflect the 2010-2011 NBA season
- The 2010-2011 rookie class has been included in the update
- There will be DNA Updates throughout the NBA Regular season. Expect the first update to arrive two to three weeks after the NBA regular season begins
- All the player ratings have been updated

The bad news for purists: the “frankeNBA Live 10″ won’t feature updated uniforms, nor any gameplay changes.

Further, the “Dynamic Season” function will lie dormant, possibly because there’s nothing too dynamic about playing last year’s game.

NBA Elite was delayed recently because of what EA Sports head Peter Moore described as “concerns about gameplay polish”.

EA Sports’ Peter Moore has believes the FIFA franchise will eventually become less-focused on disc-basded releases and become more of a persistent online series.

Speaking with MCV, Moore said  the series already has an online only world, via FIFA Superstars and its 4.3 million  monthly users, but the main series will start to evolve on a more continuous basis.

“Football for most of us is pretty constant,” said Moore. “We need to provide that persistent world, maybe sometimes powered by discs, maybe on social networks, or the cloud or whatever. That’s’ the team’s vision, that no matter where you are or what you’re using, there’s a FIFA experience to be had, it all links together, it lifts your level up and identifies your status.

“Personally I still think there’ll be discs five years from now. But generally yes, of course, I think there will come a time when FIFA is less a disc that you wait for in late September/early October, and more something that we provide 365 days a year.

“In a few years time I expect to have less of a team developing and as many if not more doing live operations.”

According to Moore, merging the series into an online-based mechanic has already started, although the firm is taking “baby steps” at the moment towards “persistence and presence for a full FIFA eco system”.

“The business model’s simple: you accept that the vast majority of users will never pay you a penny and you learn to be cool with that,” he said. “Plus you get people like me who want deeper engagement, and can’t sit still waiting for their three daily match credits or whatever, so we pay to accelerate our gameplay and create better teams, and that’s nice but it’s not really the point.

“What you are now starting to see is some linkage between FIFA Superstars and unlocking some features in FIFA 11.”

FIFA 11 is out now, and the title moved 2.6 million units during its opening weekend in the US and Europe.

EA’s announced it’s sold 2.6 million units of FIFA 11 across its opening weekend in the US and Europe.

The release of the game, which launched last Tuesday in the US and last Friday in the UK, has raked in $150 million, according to the publisher.

EA also confirmed this year’s iteration of FIFA’s Ultimate Team mode will be coming for free next month, although a specific date wasn’t given.

Some stats were also provided on FIFA’s release. Sell-through for FIFA 11 is up 29 percent compared to FIFA 10 last year, while the period between October 1-2 was the busiest an EA Sports game has had online ever, with 11.3 million players for FIFA 11.

Over 18 million players were on EA Sports online overall at the time.

“We’re thrilled at how fans embraced FIFA 11 last weekend, and we are excited to be able to offer one of our most popular game modes – FIFA 11 Ultimate Team – for free this November,” said EA Sports boss Peter Moore.

“This is a landmark achievement for EA SPORTS – we’ve shattered sales records at retail, critics are praising FIFA 11 as being one of the most authentic and innovative titles ever, and fans are connecting and competing with other gamers around the world and have logged a record number of online connected game sessions.”

The game launched for PS3, 360, Wii, PC, PS2, PSP and DS.

EA’s announced NBA Elite 11 has been delayed in the US, one week before it was due to go on sale.

The game was also due to contain a download code for NBA Jam for PS3 and 360, which will now be sold as a separate product and released in time for Christmas.

It’s unknown if it’ll be a download or a boxed game, though.

“The decision to delay NBA ELITE was hard because the game has great promise,” EA Sports boss Peter Moore said on his blog.

“But ultimately we feel this is the right thing to do. We’ve been making steady progress on basketball for the past few years and it’s going to take extra time to make the game.

“I want to thank our NBA ELITE development team for their efforts to meet this year’s lofty goals, and we’re behind them as they continue their work. While no one is happy with this delay, we appreciate the support and ongoing feedback from our fans.”

Peter Moore has said he doubts Microsoft or Sony will put out any new consoles for at least another three years, as he feels we’re currently in a “mid-cycle” with pricing and the like.

Speaking with Eurogamer, Moore said “we’re nowhere near mass market pricing”, and more business comes from $199 and below.

“If you look at the history of the pricing, we’re in mid-cycle,” he said. “Chronologically, this is the last few years of previous cycles, but when you look at pricing, we’re mid-cycle.

“Over the years, $199 and below has been where 75 to 80 percent of business is done. With the exception of 360 and the Wii, PlayStation 3, which seems to have a lot of momentum, is not even close to that.

“So we’re still to reach a price point across all three consoles where historically 75 to 80 percent of business is done. Yeah, I think we’re in mid-cycle.”

Both Microsoft and Sony have previously stated motion controllers will help keep the current-gen consequential for a while to come, and neither have plans for a new console for a few years yet.

“When you’ve got things like Move and Kinect, these are tantamount to new platform launches for both Sony and Microsoft respectively,” added Moore. “I don’t think they are going to be investing in new hardware 12 months, 24 months, 36 months after investing I’m sure a considerable amount of money in getting both of these platforms out.

“I’m sure if you ask them is this a tactic and a strategy to extend the current life cycle, they’ll say absolutely. You add Kinect to the average price of an Xbox 360, you’re back up to that $400 again. That’s not the end of the cycle. We’re nowhere near mass market pricing.

“Maybe with the Wii – and you’ve seen a little bit of a downturn in that business. But they’ve sold a considerable amount of consoles.”

Surely, Microsoft and Sony are each secretly working on something. Everyone is always working on “something”.