Leaving MS "broke my heart" - Moore

EA Sports president Peter Moore has spoken of his pain at quitting his former role as Xbox boss, revealing: "It broke my heart leaving Microsoft."

Moore opened up to Eurogamer during this month's Season Opener event at EA Canada. The erstwhile figurehead of Microsoft's console business, who left the Redmond giant just days after hosting its E3 2007 press conference, insisted his decision had nothing to do with the prospects of the Xbox business.

"I thoroughly enjoyed working at Microsoft, [but] there was a real yearning for getting back to what we as Brits living in America call home, which is the San Francisco Bay area," he said.

"And you get to the point in your life where you say, do I live where I work, or do I work where I live? For me, I would rather live in the Bay area - nothing against Seattle - and there's only really one job I would have taken to leave Xbox and that's president of EA Sports."

Dismissing suggestions that the timing of his departure had anything to do with the relative prospects of 360 versus Sony's PlayStation 3, which has been catching Microsoft's system in multiple territories following a delayed launch, Moore explained that a call from EA CEO John Riccitiello proved to be the catalyst.

"I wouldn't have come to EA if the label structure wasn't in place; there was really no room for me [before then]," he explained. "It was a combo of a great job, living back in the Bay area, and yeah it broke my heart leaving Microsoft, but sometimes you have decisions to make and this is one I did. There was no 'I think it's a good time to leave'."

Moore used EA Sports' inaugural Season Opener to unveil his vision for the future of the heavyweight division, promising a new focus on casual audiences with the All Play range for Wii and Freestyle sub-brand, while pledging to improve the depth of the firm's most successful core franchises. And, presiding over his new multiformat empire, Moore must now embrace all systems.

"My goal is to grow EA Sports, and I need the PS3 to continue to gain momentum, I've got to readjust my brand on Nintendo Wii, I've got to look at what we do on PC," he offered.

"You hope that everybody does well. The thing I love about this generation is all three platforms have set up stalls that are very distinctive. It's not like in the old days, when Dreamcast and PlayStation, then PlayStation 2 and Xbox were all crowding into a similar space. What you've got now is three platforms doing well."

"I was partisan because I truly believed in what we were doing. I enjoyed that, but now I've got different problems. I'm delivering ten franchises every year on multiple platforms, but I love it, I really do."

Check out the full interview with Peter Moore for more on EA Sports, Microsoft and all sorts.