Larry Probst, head of Electronic Arts — the world’s biggest video game publisher and maker of “Madden” and “The Sims” — dropped a couple of surprise facts at the Reuters Media Summit in New York.

• He reads, really.
  “I read a lot of magazines,” including Time, Newsweek, Vanity Fair … and even, sometimes, his wifes Town & Country.
• He doesn’t hate used games — anymore.
  “We used to look at that phenomenon as something that was potentially detrimental to our business. Now, we’re thinking about finding a way to monetize that business (by selling additional downloadable content for used games) as opposed to resisting it because it’s not going away.”
• He has never tried “Second Life“.
• He doesn’t think video game stores are going the way of record stores.
  “I don’t have the same concern about our retailers going away in the short term as people do in the record business.”
• When his kids were younger, he couldn’t keep them from playing “Grand Theft Auto” either — though he tried.
  “They had already gotten their hands on it some other way.”

Here’s our EA coverage from the summit.