The first braw bricht morning of the Edinburgh Interactive Festival kicked off with Peter Moore’s keynote on how EA Sports had escaped what he described as "the burning platform" of their old business model - games on a disc, bought in a shop once a year. "Our game had become stale, it had become predictable," he told attendees. There was a perception that EA Sports was "big, monolithic, huge, we were using large marketing vehicles to talk to our consumers." What's a smooth executive to do? "You say mea culpa, we've got some issues here, how do we resolve it?"

Key to changing things was some high falutin' philosophy about what has made EA Sports the world's most successful videogame sports brand, which Moore said was a "personal access to the emotion of sports." This is what underlies their earliest concepts in development: "the one thing we deliver is that emotion. Everything is built to deliver the emotion of sports, which no other brand can do." And what is the emotion of sports? That's easy. "It's the win, the overall theme is the win. That's the emotion that quantifies what sports is all about."

The nub of his talk was the audience for videogames, and how this can be expanded. Moore was particularly careful at every point to emphasise that "we cannot, under any circumstances, let that core consumer down". It wasn't just lip service. Moore credits the core consumer for the current standing of EA Sports - "they put us here" - and emphasised the huge numbers at the heart of EA Sports games online: a rise of 311 per cent in player engagement from 2008’s 540,000 online players to 2009’s 2.2 million. In 2010, Moore projects over a billion individual plays on EA Sports titles online, and produced some numbers that would make any football statistician gasp: every single day EA's servers host the equivalent of 300 English Premier League seasons, 150 NFL seasons, and 35 years of games. 

Key for this 'core' consumer was engagement in the day-to-day process of the games being made, and constant support and changes to the game after they own it. "Today we're on Facebook and Twitter, but also everyone on my teams has a camera, and they talk to that and post 24/7 - this is breaking the dark art, the science of gaming, up for the consumer. It humanises us." Whatever developers might think of such constant access, Moore was forceful in emphasising how important this engagement is. "You can ask the developers a question about the game. I watch them, and they'd better give you an answer."

Cagey as ever, Moore stopped short of truly hard numbers, but talked up the success of last years XBLA title NHL 3 vs 3, which has sold in the "hundreds of thousands" at $10 a pop, and the seven million consumers in Asia playing FIFA Online 2 - a microtransaction-based version of the franchise. EA Sports is expanding further in this area with online versions of Tiger Woods and NBA Street but Moore declined to expand on what form they’ll be taking.

But the biggest point Moore had to make was about the Wii - specifically, talking about the machine's players rather than the machine's capabilities. 'Captivate the Masses' boomed his slideshow: "The Wii consumer needs different experiences from that core audience, no longer can we rely on licenses to drive our business. Fun and entertainment are of more value here than authenticity." Once again the hands were up about EA's past strategy: "We were porting a few years ago, and it clearly wasn't working." The way forward is the likes of EA Sports Active, which Moore revealed has already sold 1.8 million, while pointing out EA regards it as a platform rather than a game. "By simply looking at what particular people are looking for in a niche, we're providing a solution to the challenges of health, fitness and well-being". Heartwarmingly, Moore pointed out that "not only is it a great product, but it's changing people's lives." More important for the shareholders peradventure is that "we're finally talking to girls, and women are now part of the EA Sports community".

It was an impressive showing by Moore, and he was sincere about EA's past faults while typically bold about their future - the implication of all this was that, in sports at least, EA is the top dog and thanks to "hundreds of millions in R&D" as well as expanding that brand through involvement in areas like sports analysis, they intend to maintain that position aggressively. "If you're on a burning platform, jump off" he smiled. And the last line? Mr Moore was as slick as ever. "This is a new EA Sports." You have to say, and please do excuse the pun, he's right on the money.