Electronic Arts is focusing on $250 million over four years to connect its games across multiple devices. The company is developing ways to experience the same game across multiple platforms, because it knows the world is changing.

“We’re picking our way through what ‘digital transformation’ means,” says Peter Moore, COO at EA. “We recognized that we are standing on a burning platform. It’s an oil rig in the middle of the sea, and it’s exploding. You can stay or you can hold our noses and jump. At least that way, you have a shot.”

“The company has a vision and a mission, which we don’t talk a lot about externally, but you find it a lot when you go to the [EA] office,” he continued. “In broad terms, we talk about uniting through play, bringing people together through play. The mission is to build the world’s best digital playground with fun for everyone, anywhere, anytime. We think that the future of gaming is cross-platform play, always having something with you that’s a gaming device, but everything you do connects.”

“I have four or five games here that I play on the wireless network and it saves my data, it adds to my achievements or adds to my score and my place on the leader list,” he noted. “We think that is the future, if it’s not already the present. We’re building infrastructure and data services and all of the stuff you have to do to make all of that work, and we’ve been doing it for a number of years.”

When asked how you make experiences similar across social, mobile and console channels, he said, “The intention is not to say ‘I’m going to play 11 versus 11 on Facebook.’ This is what people may be misinterpreting. Already on your iPhone, you can play with your FIFA Ultimate Team and manipulate your starting lineup, and see what’s available.”

“Eventually you can actually make a player transaction. It saves to the cloud and then when you log in on your PC at work, they’re ready to play with a new starting lineup. Whatever the device is, what is that experience you can put on it that adds in aggregate to the whole idea It’s ‘horses for courses,” he noted. “It’s taken us a long time to build what we need to support that experience from a technical perspective. It has taken a lot of work.”

Of course, all of this makes business sense as well. “We like to think that if you’re connected to us 24 hours a day then the opportunity to make a buck is greater. People laugh at me, but I play Bejeweled Blitz at every opportunity I get. I love the competitive nature of it, I’ve probably spent 180 bucks of my own money on things that accelerate my performance. And it’s purely about getting up the leaderboard every week. I can spend five dollars right now with three clicks of this [cell phone] device,” described Moore. “I won’t use the accelerators until I’ve got home to my iPad later on tonight because I’m faster at playing the game on the iPad than the iPhone. We’re seeing more and more of that. We’re seeing hundreds of thousands of people every hour somehow transacting with us that way.”

So the next generation isn’t just about “The complexity is that you have to deliver the games not only on an Xbox 720 or a PS4, but you’d better have a SmartGlass solution, you’ve got an iPhone and tablet experience and you have to be able to do something on the PC with a special app. And you’d better have something that sits as a community layer like we do with Battlelog in Battlefield or Autolog in Need for Speed, that allows you to interact with fellow players.”

Source: Gamasutra