Electronic Arts - Why the're Licensees

[heiditandy]

Original Yahoo! HPFG Header:
No: HPFGUIDX C7722
From: heiditandy
Subject: Electronic Arts - Why the're Licensees
Date: 8/24/00 3:43 pm  (ET)

Read down to the bottom for the WOO HOO portions. They have **s

http://www.msnbc.com/news/445295.asp
Possible answer for why Time Warner gave EA the license: EA signed an
exclusive deal to be the sole provider of games on AOL, which is merging
with Time Warner.
Newsweek talked with their president:
NEWSWEEK: How did you score the Harry Potter license?
 MATTRICK: All of us inside the company are huge Harry Potter fans. At
 the core of this activity is the belief that this is probably the hottest
 new property that's come to the consumer space in the past decade. It's
 huge with kids; it's huge with adults; it's got broad gender reach;
 and it's a really rich world of characters and activities that lends
 itself perfectly to an interactive experience.
 The two constituencies that we had to convince that we were the best
 home for this were Warner Bros. and the creator of Harry Potter,
 J.K. Rowling. We had lots of meetings and presentations dealing with
 our vision of the market; how it was going to grow; the things that
 make EA unique relative to other companies in this space. We showed
 some of the technical work and creative work that we have in design to
 support our dot-com effort. And we had really good synergy with Warner
 Bros. and with Rowling about our philosophy of creating a game and our
 ability as a company to create something that is of higher quality and
 more innovative than our competitors.
***It's also a real plus that we have substantial operations in Chertsey,
England. We have a campus there, and those people will be able to work
with the people who are creating the movie.***
<<now, this is the WOO HOO part...>>
We're going to build off of the book assets, the movie assets, and with
the help of J.K. Rowling, *** create some additional depth that will
reward consumers for coming to experience Potter in the interactive
space. Imagine that you're interested in Hogwarts, and you want to go
deeper into learning a certain set of spells than what's outlined in the
book, you could. What I found really encouraging is that a lot of that
has been created already by Rowling, but she hasn't had an opportunity
to express it in print or in the movie format due to the time constraints
associated with those media.*** <WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!>
 So we see tremendous possibilities to fill in the details in the
 Potter universe: to make characters that grow and get to do some of
 the fabulous experiences that are already in the book, like Quidditch,
 like learning about magic, like solving the mysteries that exist in
 that universe. That's a tremendously rich fiction, and the cool thing
 about the industry at this point in time is we have the fidelity to
 create that world, to create those characters, and make it comparable
 to what you see in TV and film.
 With that as a backdrop, we're going into preproduction of Potter: on
 the PC; persistent state worlds; we're looking at innovative online
 experiences that could be browser-based where you can download and
 develop a character; and we're also looking at handheld possibilities. As
 our industry grows, that could be GameBoy or it could be broader, with
 some of these new PDAs and the developments in the handheld wireless
 space. We're gonna take this property and build out an experience that
 consumers will say, "This is as legitimate as print or as movies, but
 I'm growing and learning and participating." That's the key thing. All
 our designs are going to let you participate and experience the wonder
 of the world, and through that participation, people will have even
 more of an affinity for what Harry Potter is about.