He clearly doesn’t, and that’s just the sort of reactionary nonsense he’s clearly hoping to avoid. But a recent post on his blog, regarding EA’s decision to stop making their Sports franchises for PC, isn’t quite as heartwarming as he might wish. It seems the reaction to EA Sports’ games becoming console only has been pretty vocal, so Moore has responded by laying out exactly why the PC is to be abandoned. So let’s take a look at his argument.
The PC as a platform for authentic, fully-licensed, simulation sports games has declined radically in the past three years as the next generation consoles, with their high definition graphics and 5.1 sound capabilities have attracted millions of consumers to eschew the “lean in” PC sports gaming experience for the “lean back” full room console experience.
I think there’s probably a great deal of truth to this “lean in/lean back” theory. Of course some of you will have your PCs hooked up to your 900″ plasmatronic in your home theatre, enjoyed from the comfort of your ergonomic massage-o-couch, but the vast majority of PC gamers are sat at some form of desk. However, it’s crucial to point out that as the sales have declined, so has the quality of EA Sports releases. For instance, the flagship Fifa series’ scores in PC Gamer UK:
Fifa 06 – 83%
Fifa 07 – 71%
Fifa 08 – 66%
NBA Live 03 on PC gets a Metascore of 80, while 08’s basketballer only reaches 67. NHL 2001 gets 90, but NHL 08 scores a weak 65. This has been a steady decline across most of the ranges, so it can’t be any wonder that sales have dropped too.
But the console versions are selling well, you may point out. Remarkably, NHL 08 has a Metascore twenty points higher on consoles. The PC ports, and they are so distinctly ports, are of a much poorer quality. It seems a stunning ommission in the argument to not acknowledge this.
The business model for PC games is evolving from packaged goods to a download model. The on-line experience is paramount, and hundreds of companies in this space are experimenting with direct-to-consumer revenue models, incorporating premium downloadable content, sponsored downloads, micro-transactions, subscriptions and massive tournament play.
This is unquestionably true. It is, in fact, the perfect response to those who proclaim PC sales are falling. “AT RETAIL!” you must reply, before pointing out not only the phenomenon of PC gaming figures online, but that these falling retail claims are a tad dubious. Thing is, Mr Moore, EA have an online store offering downloadable games, so it’s not the strongest reason.
Piracy is an issue. Sorry, I know many of you disagree with me on this, but the numbers don’t lie. Companies spend millions developing content, and deserve to see a return on investment for their risk. The employees developing the game design, writing code and creating art deserve to get paid for their work. Period.
It had to happen. It’s very disappointing to see the words “the numbers don’t lie,” without a link to any numbers. It’s not surprising either, as the numbers that do exist aren’t very convincing. (Well, they often are, but for the opposing argument).
I would also raise an extremely serious issue with “and deserve to see a return on investment for their risk.” No they absolutely do not! No one “deserves” anything of the sort. Companies that generate superb content with broad appeal you’d hope would see return. Companies that spend millions producing substandard products for a medium they treat dismissively deserve not to see a return. Business.
Also, conflating employee pay with return on investment is extremely disingenuous. Of course your employees deserve to be paid. However, if they produce substandard work not of a quality to see good sales, I’d suggest they should no longer be your employees. If employees are paid based on the sales of the product, rather than for their time creating them, then the products need to be really good. EA Sports’ games on PC haven’t been for a long time, and anyone agreeing to that contract is taking a serious risk of their own choosing.
Businesses have to make hard trade offs for where to invest for the best return, thus creating capital to make even more games. They have to take expensive risks in our hits and misses industry with new intellectual property to keep the games available to gamers fresh, innovative and pushing the technical boundaries of the hardware platforms. I know this concept touches a nerve with some of you, but our industry is founded on publishers that have driven for financially-successful games and then re-invested the proceeds in development of even more content for gamers to enjoy. It’s a simple financial premise, and an obligation for publically-traded companies who answer to their shareholders. We are not making games in garages or bedrooms any more.
A couple of years back, EA making an argument based on taking risks with new intellectual property would have had me cough out coffee I wasn’t even drinking. Things certainly have changed at EA in those regards, so he gets away with it. However, I’d go back to my point that were they to be making stunning PC sports games, it would be very interesting to see if the same logic applied.
In order to make fundamental shifts in an ecosystem, you sometimes have to hit the reset button. That’s what we have done this year at EA SPORTS as regards some of our franchises on the PC. That does not mean that we aren’t coming back next year with new, innovative, maybe even less-expensive ways to play all of our franchises on the PC, but for right now we are assessing all of the options open to us to shift the current paradigm for our games on this platform.
As soon as I hear something explained away as to do with “paradigm shifts”, I start hearing bird twittering noises. I think what he’s saying is, “We’re trying to think of a new way of approaching the PC market with our sports games.” And if he is, then great. I think EA need to do that very much. EA Sports need to start treating the PC with some dignity, rather than a last-minute thought once the consoles are taken care of. Downloadable, online-focused sporting games, at a decent price, would be a superb idea.
Are you a dedicated fan of EA Sports games on PC? Or were you, and what stopped you buying them? And most of all, how would you like to see EA approach the PC sporting market in the future?
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About Mass Effect on PC, I felt the loading stuff you did get was fairly ok. Sure, the elevator rides took a while, but there was either some news story to listen to (which could give you a quest) or a little joke/discussion between your buddies to “mask” the time it took (I assume this was the same on 360, with the difference that the PC didn’t actually need this).
Later on when you were out in space and got loading transitions when landing on planets and travelling between systems, you just got a quick loading sequence which didn’t feel annoying to me in the least.
To me it seems that the time, effort and money it takes to develop separate controls, interfaces or gameplay mechanics that translate well is a much bigger issue. Bioware were able to do that very well, but others have certainly failed before and when the actual mechanics of gameplay suffer, that’s when it turns into a really bad port.
“The employees developing the game design, writing code and creating art deserve to get paid for their work. Period.”
Do the employees get royalities now? I doubt it. They will be paid the same amount whether the game is heavily pirated or not.
Can I start banging the anti-capitalist drum again?
I just think it’s a bit interesting that Peter Moore is complaining about not making enough money off the PC games market, which he tried very hard to kill in his last job. I guess you reap what you sow, eh, Peter?
@Skalpadda
My point is that compromises that the hardware limitations of the 360 forced upon the games original development still resonate in the PC version (which probably wouldn’t suffer them if it was developed initially for it). My issue isn’t with ME and its lifts, but I’m merely citing it as an example of a wider issue of game design being hamstrung in terms of how they operate in order to accommodate inherent console limitations.
@Kadayi: Again, I get your point, by why is this Microsofts problem? All I was trying to point out was that all of the “big 3″ don’t care about how their console will affect cross-platform development, so why give MS a hard time about it? You might argue they have an interest in PC gaming because of Windows, which is true, but that’s why xbox/PC ports are relatively “effortless”. They aren’t in danger of losing their market. OSX & Linux aren’t compelling platforms for games (for more reasons than just “lack of market share”), so everything is fine as far as MS is concerned.
Of course ME is going to suffer as a result of a console port. If it wasn’t the lack of HDD, it would be (as Skalpadda said) the different control schemes (see: Gears of War). Or the differences in RAM. Or … etc, etc. All it comes down to is that a game will work best on the platform it was designed for.
Also, if ME on PC should load faster than the xbox360 version, since it’s loading off HDD as opposed to DVD.
From 2003 up to now there were dozens FIFA games on PC (not only 04, 05, 06 etc. but also special Euro, World Cup and CL editions) that distinguished themselfs by…ehmmm…nothing? Squads, maybe? If they think thay can sell the same game 10 times, well, they’re wrong. But, of course, it’s easier to blame piracy, huh?
@Mo
I’m not expressing a ‘problem’ with Microsoft, I’m merely highlighting how some short term decisions made by them with regard to the design and of the 360 have impacted in a detrimental manner on the development of a lot of games, which is something that I believe is pretty relevant to gamers and developers alike. It seems I’m not a lone in this viewpoint, though you seem to disagree with it, so I’ve argued my corner accordingly. You don’t seem to have presented any counter arguments to support your assertions so far. The only criticism I’d level at Microsoft is that it’s clear there was never a long term strategy for the 360 and that’s a shame for all the people who bought one.
@Kadayi
I understood your basic argument, and I agree with your sentiment. In the end it seems to come down to giving the console a resonable lifespan vs price and timing to not loose too much of the market. I think it’s pretty clear that the 360 was pushed out on the market way too soon, especially considering the rate at which they broke down and died. That just shows really bad attitude towards their customers.
As for Mass Effect in particular I just wanted to point out that the long elevator rides were pretty much the only bad artefact of it being a console game; pretty much everything else was improved with the port.
I did wonder if all that horrid driving around was an attempt to flirt with the console crowd though.
I would also raise an extremely serious issue with “and deserve to see a return on investment for their risk.” No they absolutely do not! No one “deserves” anything of the sort. Companies that generate superb content with broad appeal you’d hope would see return. Companies that spend millions producing substandard products for a medium they treat dismissively deserve not to see a return. Business.
I’m glad you said that. The hint of a sense of entitlement from some companies simply because they invested money and time is pretty farcical.
EA, for all their faults, do seem to be acting in a fairly interesting fashion here. If they do come back with a fresh take on their regular sport games instead of just dropping them on the PC altogether, the results could be very interesting. My cynic sense is telling me that they’re EA and will continue to just release more rehashed football crap on the consoles and more rehashed Sims/Spore crap (I like the Sims 2, and Spore looks great, but give them time and they’ll fun them into the ground as they did with everything else. The Sims in particular was already sloppily coded by the second game) on the PC. Less time porting = more time bugfixing, or, more likely, working out how to fit in more adverts.
On the plus side, there’s a small window of opportunity for someone else to bring out some new games without FIFA et al instantly crushing them to paste. Right?
as long as piracy muddies the waters companies will tend to blame it for weak sales – sometimes with good reason, sometimes not. It makes them see a large demand for their product (piracy increases the supply and depresses the price) which they aren’t seeing any money from – _that_ is the meaning I take from “deserves to see an ROI”. We’re all adults here; I think the phrase “companies deserve to be recompensed for people using their product” is pretty unarguable.
Do I think that without piracy these games might sell better? Not really. For me, piracy would be the only way to get one of those games onto my PC and I doubt it would ever even be installed.
I suppose this is the “hidden cost” of piracy – it gives companies something to blame to excuse a lack of innovation.
It would be interesting if more companies tied into the valve/steam encrypt-the-content-allow-preload-or-physical-install-but-only-decrypt-on-release-day steamworks system. My gut feeling is that the group of people who download a pirated copy before official release day will contain a larger proportion of people who would otherwise have pre-ordered or bought the game.
And I’m becoming increasingly convinced that the splitting up of EA was a really smart move… it appears to be driving innovation. Let’s face it, consoles are better for physically-present multiplayer, and traditional sports games are best played like that. So having the consoles concentrate on that while maybe doing something different on the PC could be a plan.
Dolphan – system requirements. Still, it’s a shame they don’t use the PS2 graphics engine and 360 game code, since most PCs these days have a 360-level CPU and PS2-level graphics card. But of course that would be tricky and probably require lots of work to get the animations right.
That is such a sad commentary. To say that PC’s nowadays can only reproduce the shitty PS2 graphics is just insane. What era do you live?
For your information, do you know why Crytek didn’t port their game “Crysis” to the console platform? Because nor 360 or PS3 are capable to reproduce the graphics and amount of processing. Yes, the graphics and CPU.
Consoles are only more powerful then PC’s the exact moment they are launched, and this superiority has a life span of maximum 6 months, until the latest hardware for PC’s are available. They are more expensive at this moment yes, but since you don’t buy a new console every 6 months, in the end the PC’s just surpass the capabilities of any “next-gen” console with a very affordable price.
To don’t port a game from console to PC’s with a excuse of “graphics” is just BS.
Moore you worthless bastard. You just got served!
Cancel NBA Live 09 for the PC? Take Two just released NBA 2k9 with NEXT GEN GRAPHICS for $19.99!!!!!!! It beats your worthless POS game in every which way but loose. I will never ever buy another EA developed or published game again. And you know what, you just encouraged me to download your worthless games in the future so you better freaking cancel all PC versions of every game. And pssst you know what? I know how to download and pirate console games too. Cancel those too you worthless bastard.
Unsincerely and with utter contempt for your @ss,
14 year customer of EA who will never again buy another EA game.