Word: probst
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Here's one way to beat the tech-slump blues: employ a suave secret agent, a teenage wizard and a handful of hobbits. That was the strategy of Larry Probst, CEO of video-games giant Electronic Arts, based in Redwood City, Calif. As each new generation of console hardware makes video games look more like movies, Probst wanted to snap up franchises with repeated success at the multiplex--like James Bond, Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings--and put them to work in the virtual arena...
...than 40% last year to $2.5 billion, almost three times the revenue of its nearest rival, Activision. And EA is managing to wring more sales out of fewer games: it produced only 58 in 2002 vs. 68 in 2000. "We do fewer things, and we do them better," says Probst. "We don't just throw something at the wall and hope it sticks...
...Next up: ABC's "The Runner," in which the viewing audience turns group bounty hunter, hoping to stumble across a "Fugitive"-like contestant at, say, the local McDonald's. (This one will shatter Jeff Probst's existing record for most shameless product placement...
...Survivor 3" will be here before you know it. Probst will be back, with 16 ambitious new castaways in tow, camped out for 43 days in some faraway place (the word is, Africa). It won't be quite as breathless as "Survivor 2" - would the second season be as big as the first? - which in turn wasn't as breathless as "Survivor 1," which wasn't going to be an easy act to follow anyway...
...Mole" were not burrowing back for a second season, the writers may have come to the table a good bit cockier and, perhaps, less motivated to settle. But the shows thrived, with more coming up in fall, which you can bet put the fear of God and Jeff Probst into writers, for all their puffed-chested predictions that the public would finally burn out on the cheap programming...