EA Sports has come under some scrutiny thanks to recent comments made by the division's overlord, Peter Moore, which conveyed a mild stance towards sports gaming on the PC. The story is different when it comes to the Wii, and the appeal of Wii Sports has certainly played a part in spurring interest for casual sports gaming on the platform. EA Sports executive producer David McCarthy explains in an interview with GamesIndustry.biz that his company is hoping to tap into the social experience behind sports games. For their part, EA Sports will be realigning their casual sports gaming strategy on the Wii with its "All Play" label.

One of the first steps will be streamlining Wiimote controls for All Play sports titles, which means EA Sports will be moving away from designing Wiimote gestures as many maneouvres as possibles in any given title.  Fortunately, McCarthy doesn't believe that pushing mass-market (or "family friendly") gaming on the Wii should mean that gameplay needs to be "dumbed down" to a great extent. The better move is to introduce newer gamers to a more complete package somehow, even if All Play titles are not necessarily marketed as traditional EA Sports titles for entrenched/loyal sports gamers.

Even their marketing should be tweaked to resonante with the ideal All Play audience. This entails adopting a "less intimidating" face for All Play, something that doesn't scream "It's in the Game" for once. Shocking but true.

I think we made the incorrect assumption that dumb-down and you'll get the consumer. And that's not correct - what you need to do is welcome them into the experience and them ramp them up, and we hadn't done an effective job at that.

So what would happen is that you'd come in on the Family Play scheme, you'd be able to do a move or two, have instant success - but then there was a 20-foot wall to get to the next slot. This year we've done a much better job of ramping in levels, and it's not just the controls themselves, it's also assists that go on underneath the hood - so as they get better and better, we start to take those training wheels off more and more.

So it's really a two-part process - it's speaking to them differently on the shelf and in the press, but it's also giving them a much more well-rounded experience within the software once they get their hands on it.

Casual audiences exist for Microsoft and Sony's platforms as well thanks to Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network offerings, and McCarthy explains the challenge there will be to foster a similiar "All Play audience" which is receptive to direct digital downloads over the more familiar packaged retail software route. Of course, there will be responsibility on EA's part to tailor digitally distributed casual sports gaming to appeal to said audience in the first place.