At E3 I had a chance to speak with the head of EA Sports, Peter Moore. While this interview may a bit after-the-fact at this point, in the interview below you can read about things like the new MMA game and Madden as a potential MMO.

Operation Sports: As the head of EA Sports, you're obviously very busy, but how many hours did you play last year's EA Sports titles? And I'll say as a disclaimer that developer walkthroughs don't count.

Peter Moore: I probably play once a week. This is the fifth week that I haven't been home, and it requires you actually to be in your living room at times to be able to play. I have literally been gone since the last week of April. Then I got home for a day, and then I packed my bags to go here. So I don't get the opportunity. I probably played more on stage on Monday than I played in a couple weeks.

OS: A reason why videogames are so popular is because you can create your own experiences within the game. So I'm curious why EA Sports seemingly supports user modification in certain areas -- custom crowd chants, custom arenas, custom music and signs -- but then seems to go in the other direction when it comes to a product like Tiger Woods, where the course creator/architect was taken out of the game. So I'm just curious why something like that was abandoned in the PC version of the game.

PM: Well, a lot of it depends on our leagues and licenses. The use of generated content has a lot of restrictions if you work within a licensed model. You have copyright issues, we have things like -- and I cannot speak to why something is maybe not be in a PC version versus a console version, there may some very good technical reasons for that -- but we do try to put in as many user-generated tools, the recently announced Team Builder [for NCAA Football] being the ultimate. ... But sometimes you can't -- there are always ways certain things need to look in the NCAA, NFL, NBA. But that sounds less like a license issue and more of a development issue that is probably a question for the executive producers of the game.

OS: There is always a lot of talk about the Tiger series when it comes to unlockable content and downloadable content. Two years ago you could spend Microsoft Points to boost your created golfer's ratings, and during the past couple years the Tiger series has made gamers unlock various courses by playing the game a ton. Do you think it's sort of counterproductive in a sense to go this route? Is the cheat code dead in this day and age?

PM: No, I mean we listened a couple years ago and a lot of people said, "look I want to play, and I just don't have the time to invest in getting to where I need to be, I'll pay you." So people will pay for time. A lot of people like to play their way and level up, and then there are some folks that would rather just simply pay for it.

OS: But, for example, paying to unlock cars in Need for Speed, isn't that something you could get via a cheat code in the "old days."

PM: Well, you could. But I'm not quite sure I understand what you're asking. Are you upset you have to pay for certain things?

OS: I just think it's questionable in some sense to pay for something like the maxed-out golfer in Tiger.

PM: Well, again a development question. There is a development cost to creating ways to be able to go to a maxed-out level, and it's not like we're charging you $20 bucks or something like that. There is a cost-covering exercise that goes on, the development teams who are tasked with P and L [profit and loss] have to figure out. They can't continue to add features, and therefore millions of dollars in R and D [research and development] costs, without some revenue.

And Tiger as you know is the best best example of marketplace things, and the stuff you can do. We get very little negative feedback on that. And I go right to maxed-out golfer. As I said before, I just don't have the time. So is there a value to that that I would pay for? You bet.

OS: While working at Microsoft, you were around for the beginning of the wild wild west of downloadable content. A couple years later, how successful do you think EA Sports has been on the DLC front?

PM: I think we're making great steps. You look at what we did last year, and I think three things jump out: FIFA Ultimate Team, 3 on 3 NHL Arcade and the NCAA Basketball Bracket are three very clear cases of very popular downloads that refreshed the game and were clearly value adds. In the case of NCAA, you didn't even need the game because it went right to your hard drive.

And I think that what you've just seen from Madden Online Franchise mode, and what you're about to hear as we do our announcements for our core titles coming up. Obviously we're done with NCAA Football, but still more announcements for Madden, still more to talk about with NBA, still more to talk about with NHL, and tons to talk about with FIFA.

OS: The recent Tiger Woods PC announcement was interesting, but I'm curious about Madden. Do you ever plan to turn Madden into a MMO-type of experience? To clarify, I just mean charging a monthly fee, which seems to be a direction EA Sports wants to go.

PM: Yeah, when you try a completely new business model, you tend to go into a pile of programming; and no better game to do what we call a MSG -- a mid-session game -- than Tiger. And so, clearly if Tiger is successful, if we get our pricing models right, we give the consumers enough value for the money, and people are coming over that love Tiger but don't have a console -- we used to get a lot of those -- then we look at other sports.

OS: If you ever did go this route, are you concerned that a monthly fee approach would perhaps cannibalize the seasonality approach that is currently in place for EA Sports titles.

PM: Not really. They are two very different experiences.

OS: It would just be to the PC, you would do this?

PM: It is certainly PC. Not to say that down the road there isn't some form of subscription model for EA Sports consumers via Xbox 360 or PS3. But for right now, we're looking at bringing in more sports fans rather than simply giving a hardcore console gamer another place to play. There is that too, but I think growing the overall marketplace and breaking down the barriers to price and accessibility become the keys to getting those other gamers.

OS: In May of last year, you unveiled the Freestyle brand as a way to target casual sports fans. Now in June 2009, it doesn't seem like that brand is around. So what happened and why did the Freestyle brand become extinct?

PM: Well, you know we try things and sometimes things work -- EA Sports Active -- sometimes things don't. From a positioning point of view, Freestyle did not seem from our post-launch research to resonate with consumers. We don't have the content this year that seemed to fit the branding -- not to say the branding doesn't re-emerge again -- but there's no titles this year that you can argue fit what Freestyle was. Last year it was primarily Facebreaker and Celebrity Sports Showdown.

But we gave it a shot, and we're looking at different ways to provide value to the Wii consumer in sports. And you know, if it doesn't work, we'll move on and try something else.

OS: I was at the EA Press Conference when you announced that EA Sports Active had sold 600,000 units during its first two weeks on the market. Are you a little bit surprised it sold that well? And I only say that because many people thought Wii Fit would be the big exercise title, and then others would try to get in there and would be somewhat successful -- just not 600,000-units-in-two-weeks successful.

PM: Not really. We looked at Wii Fit very early on and decided that we could do something very different than an eastern style of fitness, which is based on balance and coordination. More westernized consumers are always looking for more cardio, which at times doesn't fit the eastern style of fitness. So once we cracked the idea of how we attach the Wii remote to the body, which was about 16 or 17 months ago, then it was a race to get the right exercises and the right level of personalization.

I also think it complements the Wii Fit user: The more Wii Fits that were sold, the happier we were moving into this because there is a market for fitness or health-wellness and fitness utilizing the Wii. And so clearly we're selling into that consumer right now -- I think that certainly the user reviews are monstrous -- and it's going to continue to sell extremely well.

Plus the marketing build up to this that we had done: 60-second TV commercials, sitting down with retailers six months ago and mapping out what we thought the forecast would be. And places like Wal-Mart and Target do very well with the product, and it's end-capped. We knew what our pre-orders were, and retailers are very good at sensing buzz surrounding something. So while it's a pleasant surprise to sell 600,000 units from the get go, out of nothing, which remember makes this thing a 100,000 million dollar brand new platform for the company out of nothing, I don't think we were shocked by any means.

When you know you have got a great product, when you know you have got the marketing done, when you know retailers are excited, and you start reading the buzz, and you have bright endorsers in Bob Greene and Alison Sweeney, believe me a lot of people would have been horrified if that thing had not sold 600,000 units.

OS: Yeah, I just bring it up because there's always talk about third parties on the Wii. Basically, sometimes third parties try to out-Nintendo Nintendo, and it does not work.

PM: We were always very clear that this was not to compete with Wii Fit, it is an entirely complementary experience, its compatible with the [Wii Fit] Board. We just think we're adding more consumers, and I think retroactively, Nintendo probably thinks those consumers will go back and buy a Wii Fit Board to help them out. By the way, interestingly enough, I've see enough anecdotal stuff in some of the reviews that says it's driving hardware: "I didn't have a Wii until I saw EA Sports Active. I went out and bought a Wii." I never thought I would see that.

OS: Also at the EA Press Conference, you did unveil the new MMA game that is coming in 2010. But obviously it's not going to be associated with the UFC because THQ has that license. So when it comes to this game, are you pursuing individual fighters in a way that is similar to the Fight Night series?

PM: Exactly, that is exactly what we're doing. Not to say there won't be some leveling of -- there's enough non-UFC circuits out there that are of interest to us -- but the model that we'll use is go get the right fighters. And equally important, build a very unique and differentiated game versus what is already a very good game in UFC Undisputed.