Peter Moore is the head of the EA Sports brand which sells millions of physical discs every year, but that hasn’t stopped it from targeting digital markets. Speaking at MI6, Moore talked about how traditional console game makers must either adapt to the new world of social and mobile games or die.
The times are a changin , said Moore. You better start swimming or you ll sink like a stone.
Moore talked about market disruption, and how companies like Zynga and DeNA along with Activision Blizzard and Take-Two serve as future competitors. He said that new trends like free-to-play, downloadable mobile, ad-based, and subscription fees are diversifying the industry away from just consoles and PC to tablets, smartphones, web sites, TV app stores, Facebook, etc.
“This digitization of content will now hit our industry,” said Moore. “There is a battle raging and the consumer is winning. If you hang on to an old business model, you become irrelevant and go bankrupt.”
He noted that “paying for $60 games might go by the wayside, and EA is prepared for that being number one in mobile games, number two in social games on Facebook, and number one in casual web games along with their $3.75 billion core game business. We are three years into a strategy to lead in digital gaming, while our competitors have scoffed at it, Moore said. The old business models will be around for a while, but they are crumbling.”
EA is a major force with its online games, both free and with $60 purchases. As Moore sees it, the future is with an EA account where customers pay a continual fee for updates. “That is the future,” he said.
Source: VentureBeat
