EA: We’re going through "an unbelievably difficult transition"

Outspoken former Xbox exec and current EA COO Peter Moore has admitted that the industry is experiencing more turbulence now than at any other period in its history.

"We’re going through, as an industry, just an unbelievably difficult transformation, that is not from one business model to another but from one business model to a myriad of different business models," Moore told Kotaku.

"The conventional wisdom of ‘We’re going through a console transition and, when the new consoles come out, everything is going to be fine again’, is no longer the case. Consoles are still going to be a very important part of what we do. But so are browsers. So are iOS devices. So are Android mobile phones. So are PCs, which are feeling a renaissance.

It’s all coming together in this pot-pourri.”

But Moore does predict one consistency. He believes that the free-to-play model will come to dominate. In fact, he goes as far as to say that F2P will inevitably” become the standard system used by ALL games.

"I think there’s an inevitability that happens five years from now, ten years from now, that, let’s call it the client, to use the term, [is free],” he added.

It may well be that there will be games that survive and they are the $60 games, but I believe that the real growth is bringing billions of people into the industry and calling them gamers. Hardcore gamers won’t like to hear this. They like to circle the wagons around what they believe is something they feel they have helped build—and rightly so.”