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Peter Moore: Gaming Future Not About Cutting Edge Tech
In a lengthy interview with Edge, always outspoken EA Sports president Peter Moore put on his prognostication cap and made some educated guesses about the future of video games. The most surprising statement? He believes graphics are about capped out.
Discussing how he sees future consoles delivering content, Moore said "Will the next consoles have physical media? I don’t know, but I don’t think so. Maybe they’ll just be a really big hard drive next time. It’s hard to see how much better we can get from a graphical fidelity/realism perspective, though."
We've heard the digital distribution speculation before, but this is the first time I've heard someone mention a graphical peak. Given the large quality gap between facial animations seen in animated movies and games like Madden NFL 11, that hardly seems the case. However, Moore's larger point may be that you no longer have to compete in the graphical arms race to make money.
"Nintendo took a lot of people by surprise with Wii. 'We’re gonna have fun and you don’t even get arms or legs on some of our characters. Do you want to connect online? We don’t have that. Do you watch to watch HD media? We don’t have that, either,"' he said. "The future may not be about cutting edge tech, it may simply be about unique experiences."
In discussing EA Sports in particular, Moore laid out his five-year plan. "Where I look at where we’ll be in 2015, you’re gonna be seeing a company that continues to have its core franchises – whether it’s Madden, FIFA, NBA, Mixed Martial Arts - which by then will be the dominant force in MMA. You’re gonna certainly see a lot more of it delivered digitally," he predicted. "We of course still have to adhere to the terms of our licensing partners – Sony, Microsoft and, hopefully, Nintendo will also have caught up by then from a digital perspective."
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