ESPN

EA Sports is on an impressive roll. "Active" just sold a staggering 600,000 units for the Wii its first week of release. "NHL 09's" EA Sports Hockey League boasts an incredible 400,000 registered online players and over 100,000 registered teams. The company just announced the creation of an all new line of games based on the hard-hitting mixed-martial arts genre. Not to mention, the upcoming launch of the King Kong of sports games, "Madden NFL 10," complete with online franchises.

This is no longer the EA Sports of "Facebreaker" and "Celebrity Sports Showdown." The beast is back as EA Sports president Peter Moore has put an emphasis on gameplay above all, and the quality of titles at this year's E3 convention might just be the company's best to date: "Madden NFL 10," "NCAA Football 10," "Fight Night Round 4," "Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10," "Grand Slam Tennis," "NHL 10," and "FIFA 10" are all playable if you have the right connections (NHL and FIFA are behind closed doors), and all of these titles can make an argument for Sports Game of the Show.

I took a break from punching Penguins in the face in "NHL 10" (first-person fighting rocks!) to sit down with Moore during the convention to get his take on EA Sports and the direction he'll be taking the company in the near future. Here's what he had to say.

ESPN: How do you think the direction of EA Sports has changed since E3 last year?

Peter Moore: Two things: The Wii has been an incredibly important platform for us in driving new consumers and new experiences, and then online being an incredibly important part of the EA Sports experience regardless of sports, in particular the numbers we're seeing on Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network. If I could point to two things that we've invested in heavily over the last twelve months, those would be the two things.

ESPN: "3-on-3 NHL Arcade" and "FIFA Ultimate Team" were big successes online as direct to download games. Is that the future? Will we continue to see new products like these tied to the major releases in the future?

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More and more, we're seeing consumers say that they want more digital content. I love the fact that I can press a button on my controller and things start downloading. In the world of sports, we can refresh the series in mid-season, and there's really not a title that we have where we can't point to a really innovative online feature.

” -- EA Sports president Peter Moore

Peter Moore: We look at sports and sports have a rhythm to them. The NHL to me gets a lot more exciting when you get closer to the playoffs and yet we already shipped the game months before. So to have "NHL Arcade" come out a couple of months after our regular game shipped, it did two things: It gave us a new distribution channel to get fans of hockey interested, and I think it also appealed to people who are not hard-core hockey fans but remember hockey back in the 1990s as being the preeminent sports video game -- "NHL 94" and "NHL 95" were leading the pack. And then having the ability of delivering digitally something new late season, we've never done that before. The NCAA Basketball bracket is even a better example. When you get to the big dance, that's when the sport is most exciting, but it's four months after we shipped the physical game. So having a full download of the bracket that wasn't available on the disc and giving a good price for the 64 teams, we think that gave a positive sampling of what "NCAA Basketball" is, and I think we'll see a boost of sales next year as a result.

With that, "FIFA Ultimate Team" has been huge, even taking us by surprise. It has a gameplay mechanic that applies to all team sports games -- pick your team, get your chemistry right, put them into play and see what happens. That's been huge for us and continues to do very well. We're looking into other sports where we can apply the Ultimate Team mechanic that the team in Vancouver has built.

ESPN: Do you think the next wave of consoles will even have physical discs or are we going to see a move to download only titles?

Peter Moore: I think it's a little early, but that's more of a question for the platform guys at Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo. It's probably premature just because we're still so early in this cycle. Nintendo has yet to drop price, Sony is still relatively close to their launch price, so we have a lot of runway here on this generation. But more and more, we're seeing consumers say that they want more digital content. I love the fact that I can press a button on my controller and things start downloading. In the world of sports, we can refresh the series in mid-season, and there's really not a title that we have where we can't point to a really innovative online feature -- "Madden's" online franchise is going to be monstrous, "FIFA" has Be a Pro with 10 vs. 10, "NBA Live" has Dynamic DNA, and "NHL" has EA Sports Hockey League.

The one area where we need to push hard and do better is with the Wii online. It's still a fledgling platform when it comes to driving online usage, but there's no reason why in the future we can't improve on that. There's huge upside opportunity for us to make progress on the Wii platform.

I think more and more you have opportunities to download games, but a console without discs is still a ways away ... but we're getting closer.

ESPN: You announced on Monday the development of "EA Sports MMA" for the PS3 and 360. But isn't launching an MMA game without the UFC license a little like trying to launch a new football game without the NFL license?

Peter Moore: Not necessarily because there is only one professional football league and that's the National Football League. Three or four weeks ago I went to the HP Pavilion in San Jose to see the Strike Force card and there were 14,000 people there bringing the house down. It was my first MMA event and I thought it was great, but I don't think you can draw the same parallels between the NFL, which is in itself a sport, and MMA.

If you look at what we do with "Fight Night," we take a sport like boxing, then we go out and sign who we believe are the top fighters. We then go out and make the gameplay the real reason to buy the game. We've got a team in Tiburon that has already been working on MMA for a while and we'll be ready to ship next year. And don't think of it as a one-shot deal where if it works, great, but if it doesn't, we'll pull away. We're committed to this for the long term.

ESPN: THQ has already had big success with their UFC game ...

Peter Moore: And rightly so, it's a great game. But we think there's room.

ESPN: Microsoft unveiled their new motion sensing device for the 360 at their press conference. How do you see this working with sports games?

Peter Moore: Of course, we saw this a long time ago as Microsoft, being great partners, shared this well in advance. I think sports and I think fitness will be big with this, and as you can imagine, we've already started to figure out where we can play here. We're working very closely with Microsoft on their long-term plans for this technology, and I have to say, sports can play a big part in the adoption of that. We all, when we talk about playing sports games, when I was playing "Grand Slam Tennis" yesterday, I don't need to do that (shows serving motion) with the Wii-mote, but it's more fun when you do that. But I think losing the things in our hands, even as small as they are, might be a big deal to people. The question I have, and even when I was at Microsoft and we were looking at this, it's the same question -- do you need something in your hand to give the sense of realism? That's something that needs to be worked out. There's maybe an opportunity for lightweight peripherals.

ESPN: "NBA Live 10" is not at E3 this year. Why do you think EA Sports has struggled in the basketball market for so many years?

Peter Moore: We recognize that we still have some work to do with "NBA Live." We did have an uptick in our review scores last year, but our competitor does a phenomenal job. I have every confidence in our team that we'll be right back to where we should be both in quality level as well as being very competitive with our competitor.

We have to win people back. We know we have to win people back. It's up to us to make a superior product, then there's a word of mouth thing that becomes a factor and people will give us a shot again. But clearly, we lost some folks to the competition and it's up to us to win them back. It doesn't happen overnight.

ESPN: "Madden 10's" online franchise mode even extends to the iPhone. How important is it to deliver games that you can be actively involved in whether or not you're at your console?

Peter Moore: We need to make sure that we're providing a "Madden" experience, a "FIFA" experience, 365 days a year whether you're at home or not, and you're not restricted to having the console on in front of the television. More and more, the extension of these experiences, like Tiger Woods Online, is aimed at a guy like me who has just spent 45 minutes sitting in a lounge connected. I could've played nine holes. We need to reach those consumers who we normally couldn't reach before because they are not at home.

ESPN: With the popularity of sports games on Xbox Live Arcade, are you guys more willing to take a chance on producing a direct to download lacrosse game, maybe designing games for smaller sports on a smaller scale?

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We all talk 'Madden' and 'FIFA,' but many people feel that our best game is 'NHL.' I would love to get 'NHL' back to where it used to be where people who don't even describe themselves as hockey fans love to play 'NHL' as a video game.

” -- EA Sports president Peter Moore

Peter Moore: There's an opportunity cost we have with these -- it's not like we can get two guys to go code this in the back of the room in their spare time. You've got to put a team on this if it's going to be EA Sports quality. Lacrosse is one of those that is constantly bubbling under the surface. I get all kinds of letters from people who wish they could see a lacrosse game, but it's just not quite there for us right now for us to justify doing a full-blown game. But I think there are some opportunities for us to look at experimenting.

ESPN: 2K Sports has really been struggling with their baseball games since acquiring the MLB license. Is there any type of opening where you might be able to jump back into the sport?

Peter Moore: This has been a tough year for 2K when you look at sheer numbers, but I've said it many times, these guys have a license and I respect that. I'll stay out of the way of any conversations with that. But we're all big baseball fans here at EA Sports, we have a great baseball engine, and we've been a big part of bringing baseball games to fans throughout the years. When the time is right, you bet, we'll be in New York talking to Major League Baseball. But that's when the time is right, and right now, that's not a business we can be in.

ESPN: EA Sports recently announced two cover athletes for "Madden NFL 10." From a business perspective, what impact does the cover actually have on sales? Can a cover athlete actually help sell the game?

Peter Moore: It's a great question and we ask it all the time. The answer usually comes back, not really. If you look at the data, the research doesn't point to the fact that if you have a strong cover with a popular athlete, that you sell more. Our best sales over the last few years were with Vince Young on the cover. I maybe rest my case, I don't know. You don't want to have somebody who in any way is weaker than the brand, but at the same time our focus is on getting the gameplay right. I'd say that yes it's important to maintain the quality level of athletes who are on our covers, but at the same time we don't expect a top-class cover mask any problems in our game.

ESPN: Most people around the world associate the EA Sports brand with "Madden" and "FIFA." What's the most overlooked game in your catalog that you wish more people would play?

Peter Moore: To your point, we all talk "Madden" and "FIFA," but many people feel that our best game is "NHL." I would love to get "NHL" back to where it used to be where people who don't even describe themselves as hockey fans love to play "NHL" as a video game. I was playing the first-person fighting (in "NHL 10") the other day and my head actually went back once because the fist comes right at you. Just lay it all out, we all love to do that. The physicality coming through in that game is great, and NHL is a game that I think won't be overlooked for much longer. It's just too good.