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What
do you think of the philosophy change at EA? The drive for quality. What do you
think of that as a guiding principle for the company?
PS: To me, that is the only guiding
principle if you're making entertainment. You can't survive in this industry
without having -- I mean, I think, at least -- that guidance as your primary
objective.
I think, for me as a person, I could not imagine working for a
company that didn't have that as its guiding philosophy. And sometimes in the
old EA that wasn't always true. Today, that is the guiding philosophy, that we
have to get to quality, and quality will make you successful.
There are a lot of good games that don't
sell, but in the long run you'll win if you strive for quality, and if you
constantly put out high-quality products, you'll win without a doubt. So, for
me, it's an extremely important factor, and it's one thing that I personally
couldn't work without.
That's how I used to run the DICE studio in Stockholm
when I was a GM for that for almost ten years; that's how we made the Battlefield products, and all of those
games that we built in the past.
The
last bad game from DICE was probably Shrek.
That's a long time ago.
PS: Exactly. And Shrek was a game that came out of a studio that we acquired, and
that that game was basically done when we acquired them, so that basically wasn't
a DICE game. It wasn't built by DICE.
"DICE
has a reputation for quality" is another way of saying it that's a little
bit less snarky. (laughs)
PS: And, you know, it's hard to deliver
high quality products; that's why I'm so proud of the fact that EA has
something like BioWare in its family.
You have to admire the guys up there,
because you know that whatever they touch, you know that it's going to be 90+
rated, every single time. It might take longer...
There's
a definite correlation between development cycle and quality.
PS: Time, yeah. But, they certainly know
they've found their way of making things at extremely high quality, and I
respect them for that. I envy them for that; I wish all of us could do that all
of the time, but I think it's important that we have our Ferrari Enzo in the
company, in the form of BioWare.

EA's Dead Space
We
all know that Mirror's Edge didn't
perform particularly well this fall, and Dead
Space performed well but wasn't a huge hit, and then on the back of that
some of the analysts were saying, "This 'quality' thing didn't work out!
Time to switch gears again!" I think that's simplistic, but...
PS: I think that's way simplistic; I think
if you analyze games like Dead Space
and Mirror's Edge for their lifetime
performance, I bet you'll find them to be seen as successful.
They're both new IPs; it's hard to break
new ground with new IPs, especially in that Q3 window, when you have games like
Gears of War 2, Call of Duty 5, and a
bunch of other really strong products with a 2, or 3, or 4, or 5 on it. So, I
think that we could have done a better job as far as ship timing on, probably,
both of those.
I think that in the case of Dead Space, I think that we executed
well on our quarter targets; probably better than we could have hoped for. I
love the game; I think it's an awesome game, so kudos to the team for putting
it together.
I think on Mirror's Edge we did a lot of things that we set ourselves up to
do: it's an extremely innovative product, both in terms of art direction, to
in-game music, to the movement and everything. Is it perfect? No. Are there
things in there that we will address for future versions? Absolutely. Was it a
good first attempt? Yes! That's kind of how I summarize it.
I can't compare Mirror's Edge to what we did with Battlefield... But we did a game back in the days called Codename Eagle, in 1998, '99, for Take
2. We were independent. That was kind of the foundation for Battlefield 1942, which ultimately was a
slightly better game than Codename: Eagle.
And I'm not saying that Mirror's Edge
versus the future iterations of Mirror's
Edge is a Codename Eagle versus 1942, but what I'm saying is that I
think that as long as you learn from your previous product, and you learn from
what worked and what didn't work, you're ultimately going to be okay.
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