Moore Foresees Downloadable Shift In EA Sports Biz Model

EA Sports president Peter Moore implies that iTunes pricing is a "rip-off", as he discusses the future of downloadable content and yearly updates at the company. Moore hints that the EA Sports brand will shortly make major announcements "of licensees that will be taking the EA Sports brand in different places". Hinting that apparel, equipment, technology and broadcast announcements will be forthcoming, he spoke of testing "the elasticity of your brand; how far can you take it where it's still relevant, where it drives revenue, where it enhances what your core business..." Moore's comments are part of the fifth and final of a set of interviews from the UK's The Guardian, wherein he also admitted to personally ending the Dreamcast at Sega and raised questions about Rare's ongoing relevance. On the question of continuing with yearly updates of EA Sports franchises, Moore suggests that future content may be sold as direct downloads rather than boxed products. "There will be a time when we don't ship it on a physical disc, it's not far away, in fact we're already doing it in Asia," he says. "We might give you the core game for free, but then you start buying downloads, micro-transactions, we'll sponsor some stuff, and start shifting the business model away from 'I need to get your £49 and then say goodbye to you when you walk out of GAME', I want to talk to you every day, I want to give you things everyday that keep you in contact with me, I want a relationship with you as a consumer 365 days a year.” Despite ongoing consumer concern over the cost of downloadable content, Moore suggests that EA content would be better value than equivalent music services from Apple. "We're going to evolve, we're going to go faster for the consumer, whatever the consumer wants," he says. "So in the future hard drives are going to be bigger, broadband is going to be faster and we're going to look back and laugh at the fact that we used to drive to the store to buy a piece of plastic with data on it. That business model isn't going to exist – I don't know whether it's going to be five years from now or ten years, but it's not going to be around anymore."