![]() ![]() In late February, right in the middle of the Game Developers Conference, it was revealed that EA's chief competition officer, Peter Moore, would be leaving the publisher to take a dream job as the CEO of the Liverpool Football Club this June. After two decades in the games business, having overseen the launches of the DreamCast, the Xbox 360 and contributing to the rebuilding of EA's brand, the veteran talked candidly with Glixel about a number of his experiences in the industry over the years. Perhaps the most fascinating insight came from Moore's discussion on Sega and how the once great gaming company had failed to evolve with a quickly changing games ecosystem. After Sega had already ceased DreamCast production and transitioned into a third-party software firm, Moore said he had a lot of trouble attempting to get Sega in Japan to understand the shifts that were taking place in the global business. "We started to go up there a lot and build a relationship, and I was going back and forth to Japan and I was just so angry with Sega that they didn't see the stormclouds of what was happening in the industry," he commented. "Games like GTA 3 were changing the vibe of the content. Once the tech started to get more powerful, the creative elements that would come over from Hollywood and from television all of a sudden - that was what gave us Rockstar, and what the Houser brothers, to their credit, did for games. I mean, you look back on the history of this industry, you can point to these moments and say, 'That's when everything started to change.'" Moore explained that to prove his point, Sega had conducted focus groups with players in America to get a sense of how they view different gaming brands, including Sega, of course. "I needed to prove to the Japanese that our brand was starting just to fade away. And so we asked the focus group, a bunch of 18-, 19-year-olds, a classic question, 'If a video game publisher was a relative or a friend, who would they be?' Ah, EA. Arrogant quarterback, 6'5", walks in, gets the girl, nobody likes him, blah blah blah, but, you know, fills the room with his big personality, all that. Ah - that's your drunken uncle that shows up from Vegas once a month with a hooker on his arm and looking for money and then he's gone again. He comes in and he's the life of the party for a little while, and then he disappears for a long time. ![]() ![]() Used to be cool, but even he can't remember why anymore." ![]()
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