Polygon: A lot of people are talking about DRM and used games for
the next-generation. You guys have been watching what has been going on
with Sony and Microsoft in the last few days. First of all, what is the
EA official line right now?
Peter Moore: "We're focused at this point in time in new games and
our official position is, 'I'll get back to you'. Sony have announced
what they are going to do which is, y'know, business as usual, and then
Microsoft are looking at allowing a publisher to opt-in, should they
choose to do so. But if we opt in, do [Microsoft] charge a fee, and if
so, how much? We have not internally even begun to sit down and answer
those questions."
The narrative I've heard is that EA lobbied hard to have the
hardware companies come up with a solution so you guys are not faffing
around with online passes and you're not losing potential used game
profits to retailers.
Moore: "Absolutely incorrect. As the guy who is the chief operating
officer of Electronic Arts I can tell you that EA did not aggressively
lobby for the platform holders to put some gating function in there to
allow or disallow used games. I am on record as being a proponent of
used games. I like the ecosystem. I like the fact that it's kept
pricing at a good level for eight years. I like the fact that someone
can buy a physical game and see some equity in that game. That keeps
GameStop vibrant and they are a great launch and marketing partner for
us.
"EA has never had a conversation, and I have been present at all of
them, with all of the manufacturers, saying you must put a system in
place that allows us to take a piece of the action or even stop it.
Absolutely incorrect."
Can I take from that, that EA would be happy for the status quo
to continue, as we have seen in the past generation?
Moore: "We will figure out what we need to do. I'm not trying to
back-pedal but this thing just happened and we need to reconvene and
hear what people think and talk to our retail partners and our first
party partners. We had no idea what Sony was going to announce. We'll
reconvene next week and figure it all out.
So you have never had a conversation with Jack [Tretton] where he
said, 'look Peter, we're not going to do this DRM thing'. That came as
much as a surprise to you as to the rest of us?
Moore: "They reserve the right, and rightly so, that they will do
what they need to do. I have run two hardware launches in the Dreamcast
and the Xbox 360. There's a game that goes on where you are watching
what the other guy does and you move, counter-move and figure it.
"But we are completely focused on getting our games right here,
watching new Battlefield 4 builds come in and getting that
right and getting FIFA right and getting Madden to
the next gen level and figuring out what to do with Plants vs
Zombies: Garden Warfare and we're focused on E3."