PC sports gamers are somewhat justifiably unhappy with Peter Moore right now. Earlier this year, the EA Sports executive announced that Madden and many other EA Sports games won't be coming to the PC market this year. But wait, you didn't give him a chance to explain! Well, actually, you did, and he did, but today Moore went into more detail about his division's scaled back PC support. A summary of the reasoning behind the decision:

• PC sports gamers are gravitating to consoles.
• The PC sports gaming market is gravitating to a downloadable model rather than a "packaged" model.
• The PC versions of EA Sports games aren't getting a good enough return on investment.
• You PC gamers just pirate everything anyway and we're not going to make a PC version just so millions of you can just steal it! (We may have exaggerated the tone a little bit on this one, but you get the idea).
  

PC Sports fans can still hold out hope that EA Sports will change its mind, though. Moore hinted that the company might be coming back into the PC space next year with "new, innovative, maybe even less-expensive ways to play all of our franchises on the PC." If there's one thing sports fans should be familiar with, it's squeezing that one, slim ray of hope for all it's worth.

EA Sports president Peter Moore tells Eurogamer that the division is working on a Wii fitness game utilizing the pressure-balancy-board thing. The game will release under the new casual-oriented Freestyle label and will focus on "western" cardio workouts instead of Wii Fit's "eastern holistic fitness."

EA's version of Wii Fit is intended to make the user sweat while still having fun. Although Moore wouldn't get into specifics of the game, he would say that the key is to distract the user and make them have fun without realizing they're having a good workout. Hopefully, EA's exercise game will come with a Shamwow and some disinfectant spray for the board. Yes, we've now come to fear the fungal side of Wii Fit.

Peter Moore tells Eurogamer he wishes Sony's Home service would just ship already. The former Xbox exec turned EA Sports president says he's interested in working with Home, but he's "disappointed" that it keeps getting pushed back.

Moore expresses that he really wants Home to become the portal to the PlayStation Network and something that EA Sports could utilize, but that nothing's going to happen until it's done. Moore's got plenty on his plate currently as he tries to reinvigorate the EA Sports division and launches a new sub-brand.

EA Sports President Peter Moore recently talked to GameDaily about his decision to not release Madden NFL 09 on PC. He acknowledges the move "pissed off a lot of people," but it was a business decision based on sports games in the PC market.

He stands by previous statements he made, when he was still with Microsoft, that there'll be a PC gaming renaissance, but he says sports games aren't going to play a "huge role." He says that whether people agree with it or not, EA Sports is designing its games to be played ten feet away from a high-definition screen with groups of people playing online or in the same room. The full interview is actually quite deep, with Moore discussing a lot more about EA Sports' design philosophy, its targeted consumer and the issue of PC piracy.

Amid talk of Facebreaker and the impact of an exclusive NFL license, an quick IGN interview with EA Sports President Peter Moore highlights the prominent studio's focus on making sports games more accessible to a wider audience.

"There will be more announcements that will be ... looking at the more casual consumer that we see as a bigger force in the business," Moore told IGN. "We need to do better on the Nintendo platforms, and we intend to do that. It's a different type of game mechanic that the Nintendo Wii consumer, in particular, can play."

The statement seems to indicate a continuation and upgrade for the company's Family Play initiative, which made simplified, Wii remote specific controls for games like Madden, NBA Live and Fifa. But do these dumbed-down controls end up dumbing down the gameplay? Or could sports games use a dose of simplicity? Leave your thoughts in the comments.

As if we needed more reasons to be insanely jealous of Peter Moore. Not only does the guy get a $1.5 million bonus and six-figure salary for jumping from Microsoft to EA Sports, now comes reports that the executive is making even more scratch off EA stock awards.

CNN/Money's "insider actions" table for Electronic Arts shows Moore receiving a whopping 400,000 shares in the company last week, a transfer worth upwards of $21 million. As if that weren't jaw-dropping enough, the stock has since gone up two points to $55.73 a share, earning Moore $800,000 in virtual money in just seven days. Nice work if you can get it.

We understand that stock ownership gives Moore a more personal stake in the success of the company, but we can't help but boggle at the worth EA is placing on having this one man lead one of their biggest divisions. Will having Moore at the helm really sell that many more copies of Madden? Here's hoping ... for the sake of Moore's stock value.

[Via CVG]

He's been on the job officially two days, and today Peter Moore and EA Sports will announce a new title called GameShow. In an interview with GameDaily BIZ, Moore talks about today's expected presentation of GameShow, which will be a "simple, free, fun experience" sports trivia game. There will also be streaming video and audio according to Moore. He says, "I think you'll find it an interesting departure from what we typically have at EA Sports with regard to how we have consumers compete with each other, but I think it checks every box of what sports fans are looking for."

According to the NY Times, GameShow will initially be PC based. If it is successful, it will move to XBLA and PSN. We haven't really seen an ad-supported program done on consoles yet, it would be a nice change of pace.

Read: Peter Moore's Sporting Interview
Read: A global vision for the new man at EA Sports

Sony moved with the quickness to say they're cool with Microsoft's Xbox poster boy Peter Moore going to EA. CEO of SCEA Jack Tretton says, "We wish Peter the best of luck in his new role at Electronic Arts and look forward to working with him. We have an outstanding relationship with EA and their sports products have been incredibly successful on all our platforms. I am sure this will continue with Peter now at the helm."

What an interesting situation when Moore and Tretton play the next Madden for the first time. Wonder if they'll quibble about which system it plays better on? Well, business is business and Moore has a new master now, so everything will be peachy keen. At least now Tretton and Moore can have cocktails and hang out without everyone wondering the moment they'll go all Dynasty cat fight (the clip is even in German which makes it 20x more delicious).

In a recent interview with Microsoft's Peter Moore, Mike Antonucci of the Mercury News had a portion of his interview dedicated to reader questions. The topic of the Xbox 360's failure rate was bound to come up. In a stunning display of spin typically reserved for only the best bad Sony news, Moore says consumers should focus on their treatment once their Xbox 360 fails, not the failure itself.

Moore says, "I can't comment on failure rates, because it's just not something -- it's a moving target. What this consumer should worry about is the way that we've treated him. Y'know, things break, and if we've treated him well and fixed his problem, that's something that we're focused on right now. I'm not going to comment on individual failure rates because I'm shipping in 36 countries and it's a complex business."

It's a moving target? It may be an ever increasing target (or decreasing target), but it's hardly moving. All it takes is the number of defective units sent in for repair, divided by units sold and voila ... a clear number. Nobody is screaming recall and owners have come to expect the Xbox 360's failure as part of the console's lore, but they're sticking to that 3% figure ... which works out to over 300K units, no small number.

[Via 1UP]

The always-entertaining Peter Moore said in an interview with CNet that his ideal Xbox consumer "would rather starve to death than not have a high-definition TV." The comment comes in advance of the Xbox's pending launch in India, where Moore says a growing middle class will pick up the premium product. Nearly half of all children in India are underweight, according to The World Bank.

Moore also seems less enthusiastic about the much-hyped Wii60 bundle nowadays, saying that he fears Nintendo's system will only be "fun for a few minutes." He also takes the opportunity to dig at Sony's upcoming Playstation 3, saying the system's high initial cost will make it hard to eventually come down to the mass market price of $199.

Also see: Some Xbox 360 owners who picked food over an HDTV

At the Churchill Club in California yesterday, Peter Moore wasn't the only one gazing into his crystal ball. Raph Koster of Sony Online Entertainment and Lars Butler, formerly of EA, were cheerfully predicting the downfall of single-player gaming, with Koster going so far as to say that the last 21 years of gaming history are an aberration.

Drawing from the fundamental principle that "people play games together", Koster and Butler predict a huge shift in the games industry as the impact of online gaming starts to really hit home. Butler's claim that "linear entertainment in single-player is to media what masturbation is to sex" is eerily similar to David Jaffe's comparison between games and porn. Experiences are enriched by the presence of other people, and perhaps the depth of multiplayer gaming and the online social interaction embodied in these games can provide the emotional content that Jaffe finds so lacking.

[Via Raph's Weblog]

[Update: Raph has written a much more detailed explanation behind his statement.]