EA Sports President Peter Moore has told MCV that the label has “learnt some hard lessons” about developing games on Wii – as it pledges a renewed push on the format throughout 2009.

In an exclusive interview, Moore said that EA Sports had traditionally been fixated on graphics – but that the culture at the firm had now changed to best exploit the success of Nintendo formats.

More told MCV:

“You can’t ignore the guy who’s got half the business now. So we’ve had to adapt our franchises and our messages.

“We’ve been used to using graphics as the selling point for the latest FIFA or Madden. The Wii can’t deliver that, but we’ve come to learn how to adapt to the motion. We had a slow start and maybe we were leading on Xbox 360 and PS3 a few years ago and not paying enough attention to the Wii.

“Tiger, EA Sports Active and Tennis will have a strong focus on the Wii. Both Active and Tennis are exclusive – although Tennis will be on Xbox 360 and PS3 later in the year.

“We’ve built teams now that have Wii experience, they’re probably working on their third iteration of Wii games and we’ve learnt some hard lessons about how to make our licenses and our gameplay relevant to the Wii consumer.

“It’s not about the detail in the shirts and being able to smell the grass anymore. It’s about having fun and how the games feel.”

To read the full interview, click here.