EA uses Wii to target casual gamers

Q&A; with EA Casual Entertainment president Kathy Vrabeck

By George T. Chronis -- Video Business, 11/21/2007

NOV. 21 | Christmas 2007 isn't shaping up to be the high-definition love-fest that Sony and Microsoft envisioned for their videogame platforms. Nintendo upset those assumptions with its hot-selling Wii, and game publishers such as Electronic Arts have had to adjust.

Last summer, EA restructured its operations to promote more product innovation and revenue growth, creating EA Casual Entertainment and hiring veteran Kathy Vrabeck as the division's president. Vrabeck had been president of Activision Publishing, where she had overseen product research, acquisitions and brand management.

VB’s George Chronis sat down with Vrabeck to learn how she is approaching the casual segment and how EA is working to leverage the popularity of the Wii.

VB: Many videogame publishers found themselves playing catch up following the success of the Wii. Given how Nintendo is positioning the console at mainstream consumers, what is EA Casual's strategy for targeting those same consumers?

Vrabeck: Even thought the Wii has been incredibly successful and is one of my all-time favorite platforms, you still can only have so big an installed base in the first six months. You don't want to shower it with 20 games across a smaller installed base. What you're going to see this holiday on the Wii from EA is us hitting the platform at the right time when the installed base is big enough to really go after it with some interesting and unique games. That also means unique gameplay. All of the groups, including sports, have included this Family Play mode on Wii SKUs that are going to make each title more accessible. That's how we see the Wii being played.

VB: How important to you think the Wii platform is to the fortunes of EA Casual? Do you see your division developing into the Wii specialists within EA?

Vrabeck: I wouldn't say we're going to become the Wii specialists. I would expect my group becomes the place where we can try out some new things and go after the all-family players, games like Smarty Pants with trivia. This is a game that is perfectly designed for the Wii; it takes full advantage of the controller.

VB: How many Wii titles will EA Casual publish for the holidays, and how extensively will you market them?

Vrabeck: Right now, for the holidays, it’s a little bit broad. We launched Harry Potter across multiple platforms in June but with a special emphasis on the Wii from a marketing standpoint. Potter games historically do well during the holidays even though they come out in summer. Also from our group, we launched Boogie recently and believe that will continue to be a big seller at the holidays. We launched that with a big marketing campaign. It has the microphone packed in, and we expect word-of-mouth to build through December. We'll be launching Playgrounds and Smarty Pants and are still working out marketing spend on both of those.

VB: How independent is EA Casual in communicating and dealing with national and regional retailers?

Vrabeck: Where we have packaged goods going into retail, we're coordinating that through the EA sales force. We are working with them to go into the retailers to talk about how some EA Casual games are different. The casual consumer isn't the guy running into GameStop every Friday and plunking down his $50. Making sure retailers understand how this category is shopped and how it needs to be promoted is going to be a big role within my group.