EA Games Launches Its Own Division Devoted To eSports
The growing popularity of eSports has not gone unnoticed by Big Publishers Inc. On the heels of Activision, Electronic Arts has announced its own eSports division, the EA Competitive Gaming Division (or CGD for short), to be helmed by COO Peter Moore. EA spoke about the new venture in a prideful blog post on their website….
As the latest step in our journey to put our players first, this group will enable global eSports competitions in our biggest franchises including FIFA, Madden NFL,Battlefield and more. The CGD will be built around three core pillars:
· Competition – To create highly-engaging competitive experiences with our games, officially supported by Electronic Arts.
· Community – To celebrate, connect and grow our community of players across all levels of expertise.
· Entertainment – To develop live events and broadcasting that bring the spectacle of competition to millions of people around the world.
The post also mentions various tournaments EA has held in recent history that are eSports-like….they’re not starting from scratch with this. “FIFA fans around the world continue to compete in the FIFA Interactive World Cup, ESL One is hosting worldwide championships with Battlefield 4, we recently announced the return of the Madden NFL Live Challenge, and our games will be played in dozens of other regional competitions around the world in the next year.” Events like these will now be centralized under the CGD banner, along with new ones that have yet to be announced.
Moore remains COO of EA for the time being, but as of the end of this fiscal year (March 31, 2016) he will take over CGD full-time.