Steven Spielberg will design 3 new games for EA

steven spielberg plays wii with shigeru miyamoto

Shigeru Miyamoto, left, legendary video game designer for Nintendo, known as the Spielberg of video games, having created Mario, Donkey Kong and the Legend of Zelda, plays Tennis with Steven Spielberg on Nintendo’s new game console called Wii, using the controller as the racket to physically hit the virtual ball, on E3. Besides seemingly enjoying himself, Mr. Spielberg has to play to get insight into next-generation console gaming because…

Last fall, Electronic Arts said it had entered into a deal to create three original games in conjunction with noted film director Steven Spielberg…

These are not going to be games related to Spielberg’s films, but will in fact be entirely new creations. EA is hoping it can leverage Spielberg’s story creation chops and put together a winning set of brand-new titles.

The chief advantage of doing so, beyond the obvious marketing potential? Such games could go a long way to helping EA challenge the notion that it only creates games based on its successful franchises like “Madden NFL,” “Harry Potter” and so forth.

Neil Young, the general manager of EA’s Los Angeles studio, mentions what it’s like to work with Steven Spielberg: “It’s going very well. Steven’s at the studio every week. He collaborates very closely with executive producer Doug Church and myself and the team we’ve created. We’re getting the first game rolling, and we want to understand what that is before we get going on the second. And Steven’s great. He’s humble but has strong opinions about story, and also about game design. He’s also flexible. We iterate the story and the game design almost every time we’re together. Now we’re almost at the point where we have a good understanding of what the game is, and a good understanding of what the game mechanics are.”