Xbox leader jumps ship for EA sports post

Peter Moore, a video game industry veteran who became the face of Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox business, resigned Tuesday to join top game publisher Electronic Arts Inc.

Moore, 52, plans to leave the Redmond, Wash., company Sept. 1 to become president of EA’s sports games division, which generated one-quarter of the company’s $3.1 billion in revenue last year, Lazard Capital Markets estimated.

Moore had been vice president of interactive entertainment at Microsoft. To replace him, Microsoft tapped another industry veteran, Don Mattrick, who is former president of EA’s worldwide game studios.

Snagging Moore is part of new Chief Executive John Riccitiello’s effort to reawaken EA, whose franchises include “Madden Football,” “The Sims” and “Medal of Honor.”

“Riccitiello is bringing in some big names,” said Mike Vorhaus, managing director of Frank N. Magid Associates, a media consulting firm. “This is a big change for EA, which has historically promoted insiders.”

EA’s stock has languished in recent months as investors have fretted over the company’s slowness in developing games for Nintendo Co.’s increasingly popular Wii game console.

Shares of the Redwood Shores, Calif.-based company gained $1.38 to $49.47 on Tuesday, but were down nearly 2% for the year.

EA declined to make executives available for an interview. Moore could not be reached.

News of Moore’s departure comes at an awkward time for Microsoft. Earlier this month, the company said it would take a charge of up to $1.15 billion to fix malfunctions in an “unacceptable” number of Xbox 360 game consoles and to extend the console’s warranty from one to three years.

Microsoft said Moore’s move was unrelated to the Xbox 360 glitch, which owners have referred to as the “red ring of death” because the console displays three red lights when it fails.

Robbie Bach, Microsoft’s president of entertainment and devices, said Moore was driven by “personal reasons” and wanted to return to the San Francisco Bay Area, where he had served as president of Sega of America. There, the former Long Beach shoe salesman and Red Sox fanatic earned a reputation as a feisty underdog, selling Sega’s game consoles in a market dominated by Sony Corp.’s PlayStation brand.

Moore left Sega in 2003, shortly after the company abandoned its hardware business to focus on developing games.

“Peter’s a brilliant marketer,” said Michael Pachter, an analyst with Wedbush Morgan Securities. Pachter said Moore would help EA better compete against Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. in the multibillion-dollar sports games market.

Moore, who grew up the son of pub owners in Liverpool, England, will get a $550,000 salary, a one-time bonus of $1.5 million, and 50,000 EA shares vested over a four-year period, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Mattrick, who left EA in February 2006, had been a consultant for Bach at Microsoft. Mattrick, 43, founded a game company, Distinctive Software, in 1982 when he was 17. He sold the company to EA in 1991, just as the video game business began to boom.

alex.pham@latimes.com