EA: Casual is the future, consoles are the past

The claims come in spite of the recent departure of Casual boss Kathy Vrabeck and the merging of EA’s Casual and The Sims labels, but mirror recent claims from outside the industry.

Moore, who is the current president of EA Sports and the former head of both Microsoft’s Xbox division and Sega’s Dreamcast console, was speaking at the BMO Capital Markets Interactive Entertainment Conference earlier this week when he stated: “We need to grow into a more mass market company and at the same time we need to make sure we're digitising our content and having deeper and more meaningful relationships direct to consumers.”

Moore then showed a slide presentation which depicted brands such as Madden, Tiger Woods and FIFA, along with the Microsoft Xbox 360 and Sony PS3, as all being ‘yesterday’s’ technology. Things falling into the ‘future’ bracket included the EA Freestyle logo, subscription-based gaming, Nintendo and digital distribution.

“Sports is a core part of what this company has been about for nearly two decades,” he added. “We’re looking to grow the overall sports segment and take into account this new consumer that's looking for a different experience.

“We're saying great growth in what I'm calling lifestyle sports. Our strategy is to return the EA Sports business to double-digit growth. At times, our games have been too hard. We need to make our titles much more approachable and accessible to the new consumer.”

However, bear in mind that EA’s first title under its EA Freestyle label, boxing title Facebreaker, was a critical and commercial flop.

Source: Kotaku