Peter Moore says digital distribution is the way forward
EA to lead the way
EA's Peter Moore says he's confidant downloads are the future and the experience of buying a physical disk is on the way out.
In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz at E3, Moore said "You're talking to a company here that truly believes that every consumer will ultimately go online, whether it's five years from now. You're talking to a company that ultimately believes that physical media goes away, that how we get our media - whether it's games, we're already doing it through music, or if it's TV shows - it's going to go through Internet Protocols more than it is through cable or satellite,"
"Whatever you want to think about the future, there's no doubt that the Internet and connected experiences will be a bigger part of our lives than they ever have been. I'm always fond of saying that we'll tell our grandchildren that we drove to the store to buy a physical disc."
He also warned the industry as a whole to embrace the new technology to avoid the same pitfalls that digital distribution brought the music industry. "In tomorrow's world we'll have half a terabyte of storage at home, everything will be in there, and we as an industry need to make sure we don't become another music industry,"
It isn't only online distribution that Moore sees as becoming increasingly important, he also said that games without some form of online functionality are now seen as "primitive". To prove his point EA are set to implement a social games service called Nucleus. This new system will track preferences, scores and relationships across all EA games that support it allowing a new level of cross game communication.
Nucleus will begin to appear in games in the next year, and EA aim to have it implemented in twenty five titles by the end of 2009 including many EA Sports games, Battlefield Heroes and Spore.
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