Peter Moore Talks About His Experiences In the Gaming Industry

Over the past several days, the Guardian has posted a five-part interview with Peter Moore, head of EA Sports. Moore was also the president of Sega, and a vice-president at Microsoft, so his experience at the top levels of the gaming industry is extensive. He describes how he came to be employed by Sega, the development of the Dreamcast, and its subsequent flop when confronted with the Playstation 2. He also discusses his involvement with the development of the Xbox franchise, how the integrated hard drive "killed" the original model, and he gives his account of how the Red Ring of Death fiasco affected the company. The series ends with a look at EA Sports' plans for the future, and how they're trying to create a new business model beyond the micro-payments popularized by iTunes, which Moore calls "a rip-off."

Comments

I remember my first reaction to Wii controller

[melted]

I was at Microsoft at the time (though not in E&D division). It was immediately obvious to me that it would take over the motherfucking world. This sorta means that vision-wise, I'm better than those overpaid retards who keep pumping shareholder money into a console that will never provide any ROI. The worst part is (well, for them anyway), Sony PS3 will provide ROI in a year or two, when Blu Ray really takes off.

Re:hate to break it to you but

[Alarindris]

What a terribly formed sentence.

Moore is a retard

[Anita Coney]

The quote about Apple and the music industry shows an incredible amount of ignorance and assitude. Here's exactly what I'm talking about:

I am not going to be at the helm of a company that ends up like the music business that refused to stop trying to sell you CDs for £15 because it was a hugely profitable model. And the music consumer says, 'you know, I don't want to pay £15 for 12 tracks of which I want two, I don't want shiny discs anymore'. And so what did the industry do? It started suing its consumers for illegal downloads and, you know, Steve Jobs comes to the rescue to figure out a way to charge you 99 cents or whatever you're paying in the UK.

79p

Is that what it is? You're being ripped off.

First, the notion that the music industry should not have stopped selling CDs is simply asinine. I'm in my 40s and even I don't buy CDs anymore. They're outdated, obsolete, and completely unnecessary. The market has spoken, consumers don't want to buy music on shiny plastic anymore.

Second, the implication that the music industry should not have started selling singles again shows what an ass he is. And it also shows he knows nothing about the music industry. I grew up with music in the 70s and 80s. Back then we had the 45 single. If you didn't want to buy the whole record, you'd buy the singles for about a buck each. About the same price as a song off of iTunes or Amazon. Which is an awesome deal considering inflation.

And here's the deal about singles, musicians and the music industry made money back in the 80s, 70s, and 60s. The Rolling Stones, the Beatles, the Who, all survived selling both LPs and singles. Heck, until the 60s the entire music industry was based on selling singles. Artists started creating complete works called albums and the record industry was forced to sell them kicking and screaming. They did not want to kill off their highly profitable business model selling hit songs on vinyl. Oh the irony.

And of course this shows what an ass Moore is because he honestly believes that the music industry should ignore the demands of its customers and force them to buy what they do not want. That's exactly the reason the music industry is in trouble in the first place. If that's what Moore is going to do with the gaming industry, I give it five years tops!

And last but not least, third. Exactly how is Apple ripping customers off who buy songs off of iTunes?! God, if you're going to say something that stupid, you should at least attempt to support your argument with facts. Heck, you should at least make an argument. He just concludes it as true.

Once again this shows ignorance because Apple does not make a lot of money selling songs on iTunes, most of it goes to the music industry. Apple makes its money selling hardware. So Apple is certainly not ripping anyone off selling music.

And as I point out above, the cost of buying music on iTunes is actually pretty cheap compared to the price of singles in the 70s and 80s.

So in conclusion, Moore is an ignorant retard and an ass. The Deamcast was cool but it was a financial failure. The original Xbox admittedly lost 4 billion dollars. Expect EA to go bankrupt within five years.