While EA may still be looking for a new CEO following Riccitiello's resignation in March, they still have some veteran executive to lean on with Frank Gibeau, Larry Probst and Peter Moore. The former spoke about the work leading up to the transition with Venturebeat:
"We understood the architecture of these machines was very different from last time. Looking at the opportunities there, we went after Frostbite [Battlefield] and Ignite [on the sports side]. We created two technology paths and invested early and got them to the point where we were able to ship games on them. We weren't fighting the engines as we were developing. In the last cycle, the engines weren't done. Guys were fighting the tools. They weren't spending any time polishing the games while we were starting new [intellectual property]. So we wanted to de-risk the technology piece as much as possible."
Speaking on how the company had put their faith in Criterion's RenderWare technology during the last transition, he said lessons have been learnt.
"That was the key learning. You nailed it - we blew the last transition because we relied on RenderWare. It didn't work. It set us back for multiple years. I was not going to repeat that mistake."