EA have made a Chief Technology Officer of an eBay veteran, the company revealed last night. Ken Moss comes from eBay’s Seattle office, where he headed up their Marketplace Technology, Science and Data organisation.
Moss will be responsible for overseeing the digital platform that has fuelled EA’s shift to “games as live services” – a move they’ve visibly struggled with over the past year.
“My goal is simple,” writes Moss on his LinkedIn page. “to create services that make people’s lives better.”
Moss led a 1,300 person operation at the noted Game Boy cartridge trade website, and ran the services platform that powers eBay across all devices, all over the world.
As EA’s CTO, he will lead the “organisation, strategy and vision” for the company’s digital platform and IT divisions, and – most tangibly for us – improve the “underlying infrastructure” for its games.
Moss arrives after one of EA’s most tumultuous years yet, in which the decidedly dodgy launches of both Battlefield 4 and SimCity revealed cracks in EA’s ability to deliver games as a service.
“Ken joins us at an important time in EA’s journey, as technology continues to transform the experiences we deliver to our players,” said CEO Andrew Wilson. “We’re designing games as live services, with gamers playing more and for longer than ever before.
“I’m thrilled to have Ken’s technical leadership on board as we navigate such a dynamic period for EA and the interactive entertainment industry.”
Moss spent 20 years with Microsoft, founding the engineering and product teams on the Search project that eventually became Bing. He went on to improve the lot of buyers and sellers at eBay, and Wilson reckons his “attention to the customer” will translate into “putting the player first”.
We could do with a bit of that, couldn’t we?
Thanks, Seeking Alpha.