John Ricitiello started his DICE keynote with a list of games he's currently playing—Burnout Paradise, BioShock, Portal. The one game he's playing that we're not is Spore, a title he said he'd become "fixated" on. While John got the crowd up to speed on his gaming chops, he admitted "Deep down, I'm a business guy." That helps explain Riccitiello's publicly expressed hesitance about the ultimate success of the Will Wright "SimEverything" game.

"It's probably the greatest creative risk maybe going on in the game industry today," he said, responding to audience questions about dealing with failure. Calling Spore "massive" he continued, "I believe it's going to be one of the greatest franchises in our industry and will rival World of Warcraft or The Sims or Rock Band. It's going to be right up there."

"Or not."

He went on to say that EA was "100% behind the team that's creating that, and we will live and fall together," regardless of the outcome, but that the project was one that was well thought out and well executed.