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EA CEO Calls Spore The Greatest Creative Risk In The Industry
Posted by Michael McWhertor at 11:40 AM on February 9, 2008
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.
The Into The Pixel art showcase at DICE featured plenty of wonderful artwork from beloved games like God of War, Metal Gear Solid, Half-Life 2 and Rayman's Raving Rabbids, each up for auction. The piece that looked to grab the biggest bucks was the Viva PInata digital painting seen above, which closed at $US 1400. The winner? None other than Epic Games' Mark Rein, who hovered near the bidding sheet like a hungry wolf until the auction closed, growling at anyone who attempted to outbid him. My choice? It would've been the Team Fortress 2 piece seen after the jump.
Bullfrog, Origin Systems, and Westwood Studios rank as some of the best development houses of all time. They also happen to represent three of EA's most spectacular failures. "We at EA blew it," said EA CEO John Riccitiello at the DICE Summit in Las Vegas this morning, "To a degree, I was involved in those things, so I blew it."
The 11th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards were held last night at the Red Rock Resort in Las Vegas, with twenty-six awards handed out honoring the best gaming of 2007. Sixteen of those awards were split evening between BioShock, The Orange Box, and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, with COD 4 walking away with the coveted Overall Game of the Year award. Rock Band took home three awards including Outstanding Achievement in Soundtrack and Family Game of the Year. Nintendo saw two awards - Adventure Game of the Year for Super Mario Galaxy and Handheld Game of the Year for The Phantom Hourglass. Puzzle Quest took home Downloadable Game of the Year, justifying all of those long hours I spent playing the damn game on the DS, PSP, and finally via Xbox Live Arcade. Along with the game awards, the night saw former Sony Computer Entertainment president Ken Kutaragi given the Lifetime Achievement Award and Blizzard president and CEO Mike Morhaime entered into the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame. Congratulations to all of the winners - we were so very surprised. No really! Hit the jump for the full list of winners.
Wired's Chris Kohler got the chance to interview Microsoft's Shane Kim while at DICE, and did not keep things brief. Good news for us, since Kim decides to talk about all kinds of things, from the challenges facing the 360 in Europe ("we're going to ramp up the focus") to the 360's pre-eminence among developers ("Xbox 360 is the lead development platform for 80% of the titles, maybe more now, being developed in the industry") to how they're going to trump the PS3 with the launch of GTA IV ("We already own it, I believe, from a content standpoint, because we have the exclusive episodes"). All interesting stuff! But my favourite comes when discussing Crackdown, where Kim says that despite Real Time Worlds moving onto something else, Microsoft "still love Crackdown", and are very aware that "customers would like to see more in that space". You're damn right we would. Hit the link for the full interview, it's a good read.
Tetsuya Mizuguchi, founder of Q Entertainment and best known for his work on Rez, Space Channel 5 and Lumines took the stage at DICE today to talk about the future of gaming and give attendees a quick history lesson on all things MIzuguchi. His talk, titled "Art vs. Commerce" focused on his career-long struggle to balance the artistic and the fiscally responsible. From the wildly successful Sega Rally—which sold 20,000 full-sized arcade units and 1.5 million on consoles and PCs—to the commercial underperformer Rez—a game for which he declined to offer sales data.
Microsoft Game Studios head Shane Kim was on the receiving end of a barrage of questions from the New York Times' Seth Schiesel today at DICE. He probed the VP on a number of topics ranging from Bungie's decision to go independent to who's winning the console war to Microsoft's potential entry into the portable gaming market.
Blizzard Entertainment execs—Mike Morhaime, CEO and Co-Founder, Rob Pardo, Senior VP of Game Design, and Frank Pearce, Executive VP of Product Development—took the stage this morning at DICE to talk about the company's history "From Developer To Worldwide Publisher." The three spent a good portion of their "conversation" talking about one of the aspects that makes Blizzard unique, their commitment to quality and gameplay above all else.
