REDWOOD SHORES, CA--Peter Moore's first official day as President of the EA Sports label was September 4, but the former President of the Xbox and Games for Windows businesses as well as game development at Microsoft Game Studios has been busy with his new company even before that. Just last week, Moore met Tiger Woods as part of EA Sports' launch of Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 08.

Moore has an inherent love of sports, dating back to his early days in sports retail with companies like Patrick USA and Reebok International. Gamers know Moore from his days as President and COO of Sega of America, where he oversaw the successful launch of the Dreamcast and the Sega Sports 2K franchises. Now Moore is running the largest videogame sports company in the world. EA Sports has exclusive deals with the NFL, NASCAR, the PGA, FIFA, Arena Football and ESPN.

Moore took some time before "officially" starting his new gig to talk with GameDaily BIZ about the new online casual EA Sports game he's announcing today, as well as to talk about the past, present and future of sports videogaming in this exclusive interview.

GameDaily BIZ: How have you seen the videogame market evolve since you left Sega (and Sega Sports) and now enter Electronic Arts Sports?

Peter Moore: For me, the impact of online and connected communities has been huge. When you and I first started talking with Dreamcast connectivity was 56K on a good day but more likely 28K dial-up connections. In those days we had NBA 2K and NFL 2K online with maybe tens of thousands of people, depending on the connection speed, that had a decent experience. As we fast forward to today as I come back in again, we're now talking about millions of people who are connecting with broadband speeds on a global basis and sports being the real cultural glue to have the best opportunity to maximize both the experience and revenue opportunities for the companies involved.

BIZ: Beyond the online connectivity, what do next-gen consoles bring to sports?

PM: Sports is one of the genres in our business that pay off the best when it comes to new consoles. People look at a sports game and try to relate it to what they see on their television in a real game. I think several years ago we started to have conversations where if you walked by the TV quickly in the living room and you didn't look closely a sports videogame could be perceived as a real game. We cracked that a few years ago. If you look at the power of the PS3 and the Xbox 360 and what sports brings to those platforms, we're getting that cinematic quality and the fluidity of motion. And the concept of millions of people coming together to play in deeper competition than we could ever have done before is big. Sports is the genre that certainly gets more payoff than any other genre.

BIZ: How has the Wii and its broader audience impacted sports and games?

PM: It's a great opportunity for a company like EA. There's a whole new market of casual consumers or lapsed gamers that are coming back in or people who would have never classified themselves as gamers. There are also many sports fans who have their favorite teams. We've put some barriers up to those folks because of the complexities of our games. If you're not completely familiar with Madden and you look at the controls it can be overwhelming. What Wii has done and what we have done with Family Play is bring a simpler portal for entry to having a good time quickly on the Wii. The Family Play concept is going with one controller and a minimum amount of inputs. The machine does a lot of the heavy lifting for you. We're bringing more and more people in to have the Madden experience through the Wii than would ever have dreamt of doing it in the past. I think that's important for us and it's important for the industry. My hat's off to Nintendo for giving us that opportunity to do that.

BIZ: What went into your decision to come over to EA Sports and what are you excited about?

PM: I think the opportunity to merge a little bit of what we've been talking about, which is sports--a personal passion of mine. I've been involved with sports in my career both in this industry and 17 years prior to that in athletic footwear and apparel sports marketing with companies like Reebok. Coupling that passion together with my respect for Electronic Arts and my personal respect for John Riccitiello--he and I have danced around each other for many, many years. And the ability to look at the future of the globalization of our industry and the one thread that can pull countries together--I look at soccer and American football, basketball and baseball--all of the things that people around the world understand and have a passion for.

When you combine that with the technology now that we're providing to bring that to life in either a cinematic way or in a huge social community way, it was a great temptation to me that ultimately I couldn't resist. And also bringing my family back to the Bay Area was important to me. EA and EA Sports is on the cusp of building brand new business models that will allow us to grow this business exponentially--primarily because of where I think the industry is going as a whole with connectivity and building social communities.

BIZ: Can you talk about the ESPN relationship and opportunities with EA Sports?

PM: I did the original deal between ESPN and Sega Sports because they are the worldwide leader in sports. They have a passion for connecting people around the world. They have tremendous capabilities as a company in bringing sports to life as entertainment. When you watch "Sports Center" and think about the way sports were reported before that. The innovations they've brought with Sky Cam and multiple camera broadcasts, it's a tremendous complement to the work that we do in the simulation sports. I refer directly to things like NFL, NBA and NASCAR and how ESPN brings things to life in a broadcast way and how we bring it to life in a play way. At EA Sports, we're always trying to replicate the way a game is played and viewed in real life and ESPN has done that in a very unique and innovative way for many, many years.

BIZ: What can you tell us about the new EA Sports game you're announcing today and how it fits into everything you've been talking about?

PM: We're going to be showing Game Show. It plays on so many of the things we've been talking about. As sports fans we all love to be tested on our knowledge of teams or our individual heroes. We all love trivia because it plays off the competition. We like to connect with people, whether we know them or compete against them no matter where they are in the world. And we like it to be a simple, free, fun experience. When you can bring that together and then add things like streaming video and audio, which is so important to the sports experience, it's a tremendous complement to the type of experiences that the consumer knows and already loves from EA Sports. Game Show will launch in late October and it will be free and ad-supported. I think you'll find it an interesting departure from what we typically have at EA Sports with regard to how we have consumers compete with each other, but I think it checks every box of what sports fans are looking for.

BIZ: Thanks, Peter.