Persona 5 Spoiler Bots

When Persona 5 first released, Atlus was so gung-ho about preventing spoilers from leaking that it actually threatened content creators and streamers with account suspensions. To that end, someone created Twitter bots for Persona 5 to spoil the game should it ever be referenced on Twitter. This resulted in the official Persona 5 Twitter receiving spoilers every time “#Persona5” was used. Ah, justice.

EA’s Peter Moore, who earlier headed up the EA Sports division of the company, before becoming the Chief Operating Officer of EA as a whole, is now leaving the company to join Liverpool FC, the soccer club that is also his favorite sports team. He will be heading that club as its CEO.

According to Liverpool, “The appointment completes a 10-month transition plan by FSG and finalizes the senior management structure at the club.” Meanwhile, Andrew Wilson, EA’s CEO, wished Moore the best for his ventures going forward, thanking him for his legacy. “Passion is essential for all of us at Electronic Arts. It’s what gets us up in the morning and drives us to do extraordinary things. And if you’ve ever met Peter Moore, you know that he quite literally wears his passion for Liverpool FC on his sleeve. So it’s with great excitement that we congratulate Peter on following his dream to become the next CEO of his beloved Liverpool Football Club,” he said.

“Peter will leave an incredible legacy. Peter led our sports business to some of its biggest moments as President of EA SPORTS. As our Chief Operating Officer, he helped us navigate the transformation of our company and the evolution of our business in a digital world. In the past year as Chief Competition Officer, he has driven EA’s rapid expansion in competitive gaming. Above all, through his time at EA, Microsoft and Sega, Peter has been a statesman and advocate for our industry. ”

Moore, who currently works at EA, worked with Microsoft prior to this, and Sega before that, where he was responsible for launching the Dreamcast, Sega’s last console, and give it a fighting chance. He leaves the gaming industry after almost two decades of working within it with the largest game companies of the era.

It’s been mentioned before and while EA Studios boss Patrick Soderlund teased Electronic Arts possibly remastering the original Mass Effect trilogy, there are plenty of reasons why it hasn’t happened yet. CCO Peter Moore told IGN that while it could stand to make easy money from the remasters, it’s focused on Mass Effect Andromeda. Also, the company is more concerned with delivering new experiences rather than revisiting the past.

“We’re a company that is focused on delivering for the future. I was asked a question once [about remasters and I said] it’s just not what we do. We’ve got incredibly talented dev studios around the world who are focused on delivering new IP, new experiences, [and] more and more live services.

“Can we make an easy buck on remastering Mass Effect? Yes. Have a thousand people asked me that? Yes, they have. We just feel like we want to go forward. There’s a little thing called Mass Effect: Andromeda that we’re totally focused on at BioWare and it’s gonna be magnificent.”

Speaking more about the Andromeda focus, Moore confessed that it doesn’t have teams lying around to just assign to remastering older titles. “Do we have teams lying around that are doing nothing right now that [can go and make remasters]? No we don’t. We want to focus on the future and delivering new IP and new experiences. There’s easy money to be made all over this industry. But the real focus should be on being player-first and focused on delivering new IP and new experiences and that’s where our real focus is.”

“Is there demand? Yes, there’s thousands of people who want it. Do we need millions? I don’t know. Our blinders are on and [we are] looking toward future.”

Moore is also aware about the demand for sequels like Skate 4 to emerge, making remasters an even harder choice. “We’re a 34-year-old company that has thousands of pieces of IP around the world. Road Rash! If you allow yourself to take the easy road – not to diss remastering great franchises, but there are so many opportunities for us to have people go to something else.”

Still, never say never. Mass Effect Andromeda is currently scheduled for an early 2017 release.

Despite what can only be described as a rocky couple of years for Electronic Arts, COO Pete Moore believes the firm’s best days are still to come. Speaking at the Credit Suisse Technology, Media and Telecom Broker Conference Moore talked about what he said was an “embarrassment of riches” when it came to the firms’s upcoming games. In particular, the exec said that once the new fiscal year kicks off in April, the company is going to be feeling pretty confident about the games it has on offer.

“Well it’s a little bit of an embarrassment of riches, particularly in FY17 which commences for us on April 1st, [2016] in which we’ve got some of our core franchises: a new Battlefield coming up, a new Mass Effect title coming up. We actually kick off the year with Mirror’s Edge which we have pushed out of FY16 and into FY17 and we also have Mass Effect from our BioWare studio, Mass Effect: Andromeda,” he said at the event.

Moore has previously said his firm does not want to spend any amount of time working on remasters and when laying out what EA has up its sleeve in 2016 and beyond it appears Electronic Arts is sticking to that word. Moore also talked about the fact that a new Plants vs Zombies Garden Warfare is coming out in the fourth quarter of FY 2015. It’s long been known another Titanfall is on the horizon as well, though there isn’t a timetable for that game’s release.

Further exemplifying the issues learned from releasing Battlefield 4 in a broken state, Electronic Arts chief operating officer Peter Moore EA told MCV during E3 2015 that if necessary, it would delay Star Wars Battlefront if there were issues. This is despite the massive amount of hype surrounding the game especially as it releases close to Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens.

“You can’t ship it if it doesn’t work or the quality isn’t right. You just bite the bullet. We’d have no compunction, no hesitation that if something went wrong with Battlefront, if it wasn’t right, we would just push it.”

However, Battlefront is far from being in a broken state. According to Moore, “The game is playable with 40-players already, and it is rock solid, so it ain’t going to happen.”

Which is all well and dandy but we’ll wait till the game is out before believing that. Star Wars Battlefront releases on November 17th in North America and November 20th in Europe for PS4, Xbox One and PC.

Electronic Arts will be one of the companies present at this Friday’s The Game Awards and has confirmed that it will be making a special announcement on stage.

This is according to COO Peter Moore, who tweeted that, “I’m looking forward to joining @geoffkeighley on stage Friday night in Las Vegas @thegameawards to make a special announcement from @EA.”

Of all the publishers today, EA probably has the most number of pending projects it can showcase to the public. This includes Star Wars: Battlefront, Mirror’s Edge, Criterion’s untitled project, Mass Effect 4, etc. There’s also Battlefield: Hardline which will be available in March 2015 and could use the additional hype after being delayed.

What do you think EA will showcase at The Game Awards on December 5th? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below. Thus far, Metal Gear Online, Bloodborne and The Order: 1886 have thus far been confirmed for the show (with Bethesda Softworks’ stating that they’ll have nothing new to showcase).

EA has caught some flak for its Access program, which is exclusive to the Xbox One and offers unlimited access to a range of the publisher’s games for $5 a month (or $30 a year). At the very least, some effort is being made to mitigate concerns – you won’t need Xbox Live Gold for it, unless you’re playing multiplayer – and now COO Peter Moore has told CVG that it won’t be removing games from the Vault at random times.

“I think one of the key things is that once a game goes into the Vault it stays there, it’s not going to be taken out, that’s a commitment we’ve made,”

The first batch of games to be included as FIFA 14, Madden NFL 25, Peggle 2, and Battlefield 4. However, Moore did clarify that while “The Vault will be substantial”, you shouldn’t expect to see the latest games out immediately. “New game additions will be determined by franchise and timing. We have to make decisions along that way, so there’s no template, like 30 days after a game ships it goes into the Vault.”

Thoughts on the program? Let us know in the comments.

Free to play games are becoming more and more popular in today’s industry, but this has facilitated the rise of micro-transactions as well. Some developers have gotten it right, while some like EA have had some rather rough patches throughout. If it’s not criticism against games like Plants vs. Zombies 2, then it’s for games that rightfully deserve it like Dungeon Keeper Mobile which prompted a wave of fury from gamers and critics alike.

EA COO Peter Moore had some rather interesting thoughts on the same when speaking to Games Industry International. “I think the challenge sometimes is that the growth of gaming… there’s a core that doesn’t quite feel comfortable with that. Your readers, the industry in particular. I don’t get frustrated, but I scratch my head at times and say, ‘Look. These are different times.’ And different times usually evoke different business models. Different consumers come in. They’ve got different expectations. And we can either ignore them or embrace them, and at EA, we’ve chosen to embrace them.

“There is a core – controversial statement coming from me, sadly – that just doesn’t like that, because it’s different. It’s disruptive. It’s not the way it used to be. I used to put my disc in the tray or my cartridge in the top, and I’d sit there and play. And all of these young people coming in, or God forbid, these old people coming into gaming!”

Moore has a rather interesting view on the whole situation. There are plenty of people who like to bypass all the grinding and time spent levelling with micro-transactions. However, that still doesn’t excuse the likes of Dungeon Keeper Mobile which aren’t even pretending they’re ripping you off. Your thoughts on the same? Let us know in the comments.

Electronic Arts COO Peter Moore is a fun guy when you forget that he’s part of one of the most controversial (and successful) game publishers in the world. Nonetheless, he likes to stir the pot whenever he can and told Games Industry International about the “great fight” that the PS4 and Xbox One would have this Holiday season.

“I think it’s going to be a great fight in the holiday. And as a third-party publisher, we sit right in the sweet spot. Consumers love it as well, and it’s good for the industry.

“You need powerful companies like Sony and Microsoft to be battling out with each other because it drives investment in their platforms. It drives competition. You want to see Nintendo come back with the Wii U. All in all, it becomes healthy for gamers, for the environment. When you have a runaway winner, that actually has a reverse effect.”

Currently, the Xbox One has more exclusives releasing near the end of this year while the PS4 has a fairly busy schedule in 2015. Will that help the Xbox One pull ahead? We’ll find out in the coming months.

EA’s E3 media briefing was perhaps the weakest of the lot as the publisher didn’t so much reveal its biggest games like Mass Effect 4, Star Wars Battlefront and Mirror’s Edge as it did talk about them and promise more info in the future. Why was this the case?

At least with Star Wars Battlefront, there was a very conscious decision not to announce a release date according to EA’s Peter Moore in conversation with IGN.

“These games are so big and you’ve got to get the game right. We’re often criticized for release dates and getting ahead of it too early. I never believed in nailing a date and then reverse engineering the title backwards from the date, it just doesn’t work. When we’re comfortable, we’ll announce a release date.”

Which is all well and good but it still meant one of the worst press conferences in E3 history. Given the current progress of these games, it seems like it will be a while before any real gameplay footage is shown.