Topic: EA Planning to Ship Peripherals with Upcoming Sports Titles

[Nick DiMola]

EA Sports will soon adopt the "Rock Band peripheral strategy," while keeping in mind that this strategy cannot "raise that barrier of entry and accessibility."
 http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/newsArt.cfm?artid=16222

 During a lecture at the Paris GDC,Vice President of EA Sports David McCarthy discussed the future of EA Sports titles on the Wii platform. According to McCarthy, peripherals are a step forward for the company's sports titles provided they do not "raise that barrier of entry and accessibility."    

McCarthy mentioned the success of Rock Band and its "great peripheral" but also recognized the corresponding higher price tag for consumers. With all things considered, it would be reasonable to expect that the upcoming EA Sports peripherals will be bundled with little to no additional cost in order to avoid hindering consumer accessibility.    

McCarthy concluded that "you'll see games using that Rock Band peripheral strategy from EA Sports, even within the next 12 months."

[Morari]

Outside of obvious things like golf clubs and baseball bats, I don't really see this going anywhere. Besides, I'd hardly call anything related to the Wii port of Rock Band great.

[Ian Sane]

I like how EA is pretty openly admitting that they're copying someone else's idea to fit current trends.  Could this company be any more blantantly coroporate?

They are dead on about the barrier of entry.  The new Guitar Hero sounds awesome as hell but eventually people aren't going to drop more than $100 for annual sequels.

[Kairon]

Someone once told me that innovation is filing the serial number off of someone else's work and claiming it as your own.

[NinGurl69 *huggles]

How about an EA M-16 peripheral,

or a blinged-out Need for Speed wheel,

or a pig-skinned football sleeve (live size girth),

or a microphone stand,

or a Daniel Craig mask,

or a

or a

or all of them combined

[Kairon]

a blinged-out Need for Speed wheel

DO WANT.

[Michael_82]

How about just not giving us crappy ports?  Granted the third installment of Madden looks nice this year.  But, not sure if anyone has kept up with news on NCAA 09...it looks worse than the PS2 version...truth.

[Morari]

They are dead on about the barrier of entry.  The new Guitar Hero sounds awesome as hell but eventually people aren't going to drop more than $100 for annual sequels.

We shouldn't see annual sequels of Guitar Hero anyway, as DLC is being fully introduced (and hopefully supported) in the upcoming iteration. There's really not much else you can add to that specific genre once you have all of the instruments and such in. Beyond that, it's just additional songs, which is what DLC is theoretically for. Activision sure does like to milk those franchises though...

[NinGurl69 *huggles]

Not yearly sequels, just quarterly sequels.

[Kairon]

Not yearly sequels, just quarterly sequels.

LOL... T_T