EA is looking to double down on competitive gaming, as the publishing giant has announced their latest venture, which is a brand new division of the company dedicated to competitive gaming led by the man himself Peter Moore. The goal of this new Competitive Gaming Divsion — or CGD, as it’s referred to in the latest blog post on EA’s website — is to “enable global eSports competitions” on some of their biggest titles, including FIFA, MaddenNFL, and non-sports games like Battlefield.
The Competitive Gaming Division will focus on creating more competitive experiences for EA titles, and develop live events while also growing the competitive community. With eSports becoming a big business of their own, it’s a smart move on EA’s part, albeit a little behind. Still, it’s never too late to embrace a growing aspect of business, and it seems with this move that EA are fully committed to getting the most out of the competitive aspect of their games.
Joining Peter Moore on the new competitive gaming division is Todd Sitrin, who will take on the role of Senior Vice President and GM for the division. Over at IGN, Moore spoke about his new role at the company moving from COO to Executive Vice President and Chief Competition Officer, offering a bit of insight as to what’s in store for the future.
“We’re already very engaged with our development teams around the world to make sure our games have got modes that lend themselves very well to competitive gaming, built-in from the get-go. Not as something that’s put in as an add-on mode or a last-minute afterthought.”
Presumably that means we’ll see more game modes tailored to competitive gaming and eSports, though what that means for existing franchises is anyone’s guess. Moore did seem interested in the idea of creating titles from the ground up with eSports and competitive gaming in mind, however.
“I think there is a huge opportunity to build a game from the ground up that says, ‘this game is gonna have five modes, like capture the flag and tower defense.’ I don’t know, things that people love, we’ll figure all that out.”
Regardless of whether or not you think that eSports are comparable to sports as I wrote in my editorial on the subject published earlier today, they’re certainly taking the world by storm. What do you think of this move by EA? Are you looking forward to the future possibilities? Let us know in the comments.