Madden Arcade touching down this year

Following Electronic Arts' mixed quarterly earnings call today, its top executives took questions from financial analysts in a conference call. Among those assembled was EA Sports' outspoken president Peter Moore, who revealed two upcoming projects from his department.

After saying Madden NFL 10 preorders were tracking "slightly ahead" of last year's tally, the former Xbox evangelist revealed a new arcade-style game, Madden Arcade, would be released via digital download this fall.

"Earlier this year, we took the award-winning NHL game energy and developed [NHL] 3 on 3 Arcade," said Moore. "It was simple to pick up and play at launch as a fully downloadable game. We will follow this approach with Madden Arcade later this year." He did not offer an exact date, price, or platforms for Madden Arcade.

Prior to the call, EA revealed the decently reviewed EA Sports Active has sold 1.8 million copies since its May 19 release, making it the best-selling EA Wii game ever. Little surprise, then, that Moore later confirmed that the workout title would be receiving its first expansion in the very near future.

"EA Sports Active has captured a whole new segment of consumers," Moore declared. "We have done this with an unconventional campaign in outlets popular to this consumer. In addition, we expanded our distribution beyond our traditional retail outlet, including Dick's Sporting Goods, Costco, and Sam's Club. Given the success, we have decided to launch an expansion pack this holiday." In an interview with GameSpot last year, he said the EA Sports brand would cover several genres, with a soccer and abdominal workout-focused games already being planned.

In fact, EA Sports Active has been so popular that the publisher has moved staff off another project to work on it. "We are using development resources from our Grand Slam Tennis team on our EA Sports Active franchise," Moore continued. "As a result, we are delaying the 360 and PS3 tennis SKUs." The Wii version of the game, released on June 8, has sold only 54,000 units in the US through June according to the NPD Group.