You take Superman. We're talking about an open-world game
with 3-D flying. I mean, no one's done that. No one expects us to be
that ambitious with a movie title, but it's really important for the
technology and game engines that we're building for the next-generation machines. Medal Of Honor, where you can jump out of
a plane and land anywhere [to] start your game, again, no one's tried
that.
It's incredibly important for us to make the right investments
and get the technology and the game-play right for the growth in this
coming generation of consoles.
Open-world gaming seems to be one of the buzz phrases of this E3. Sure, Grand Theft
Auto has been successful with its open-world framework, and,
theoretically, offering gamers more choice in how they play games is a
good idea. But is there any sense that gamers really want that?
| Paul Lee |
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It doesn't have to be a fully open-world game like
Grand Theft
Auto, but I think open-world elements of a game, where you're not
moving and reloading, going from platform to platform, I think that
is really compelling.
And I think consumers are going to expect and demand that in this
generation of machines, more so than they did in the past generation.
EA seems to be placing more and more emphasis on
developing its own content, as opposed to licensing it from other
content owners. Do you have any targets on what percentage of
your business you want owned IP [intellectual property] to be?
Our goal is to get over 50%.
In terms of developing new IP, you signed the deal with Steven Spielberg. How soon
before we see some of the fruits of that?
I don't think we're prepared to announce that yet.
Are we years out? Are we months out?
It won't be months. It will either be in our fiscal '08 or '09 is
my guess. You know, either late of one or early of the other.
The investment community seems to love owned IP because they
think it offers higher profit margins. But THQ CEO
Brian Farrell said to me that the margins on owned-IP games end up being about the same as
those of licensed games, because the licensing costs come out about
the same as the marketing costs for new IP. What's your take on that?
Again, this is one of those things where you can be right on both
sides. On the one hand, you save margins [with owned IP], because
you're probably saving 10 to 20 percentage points. On the other
hand, if you do your own IP, there's not that built-in awareness of a
particular property. You have to spend a bit more on marketing. But
the third part of it is -- that doesn't get talked about a lot -- your
ability to create games.
Troy Wolverton
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