Nintendo Wii Fanboy

If you're in the gaming industry on the development end, odds are you've had plenty of meetings talking about the success of the Wii platform and how your company needs to get its own slice of the pie (well, unless you're Epic). EA has decided that they want a fairly decent slice of that pie, and are doing so with special Wii versions of their sports games. EA expects that sales of its sports games will account for $1.3 billion in its fiscal year (which just ended in March), coming to a third of their total revenue.

The model for them (like others) has been Wii Sports. Peter Moore, head of EA Sports, commented that EA has "no intention whatsoever of dumbing down the experience that we all love and that drives this multibillion dollar business ... we need to make sports games more approachable." He then comments how Wii Sports became so popular "and we saw that and decided we needed to redefine what our sports games were about." These new accessible Wii versions of EA's popular sports games will have an "All-Play" label attached. Moore explains it as "like how swimming pools have a deep end and a shallow end. EA Sports has really only built a swimming pool with a deep end. It's intimidating for a lot of people to jump right in the deep end. With All-Play, we're building a shallow end."

Maybe with all this Wii support, Reggie will finally send Peter one.

If our lives didn't revolve around Nintendo, we'd think Peter Moore worked for the company. Instead, we know he's the competition, however his public attitude as of late towards Nintendo presents anything but, as he once again compliments the company and speaks about how much of a fan he is.

In the latest edition of gaming magazine EGM, during an interview Moore says he was hoping his "friend" Reggie would "send me one [a Wii]," but quickly reminds us his house is dominated by another console. Moore also goes on to say that there is no bigger franchise in gaming, to him at least, than Mario.

[Via Go Nintendo]

During a roundtable discussion at E3, Peter Moore discussed mostly his console, yet managed to take a second to say a thing or two on the Wii. In discussing the possibility of purchasing a Wii upon release later this year, Peter called upon Nintendo ass-kicker, and subsequent name-taker, Reggie Fils-Aime to hook him up with a free unit.

"Well I hope my friend Reggie [Fils-Aime] sends me one, I don't know. [laughs] Look I was there when Iwata-san pulled out that thing. I was there in the front row in Tokyo... and I said [to myself] "You've got to give 'em kudos for trying." And I'm literally going to go over there tomorrow and try to find Reggie or find Perrin [Kaplan] and I think Mario's the game... if you've got to play one game it's Mario. I'm sure I'll get one. Right now I'm trying to get my Brain Age down [laughs]. Look, it's not partisan; I love what Nintendo is doing."

So even though a little bit of that comes off as condescending, which you can't blame me for assuming as I wasn't there and only have text to work with, any press is good press, no?