EA job cuts delay Dragon Age: Origins and Sims 3

Posted at: 4:28pm 4th February 2009 by Clive Webster

EA cuts 1,100 jobs and announce delays for Dragon Age: Origins, The Sims 3 and Godfather 2. Mass Effect gets a launch date too.

Bit-tech has two EA stories today, one with reasonably good news for gamers (The Sims 3 has been delayed) and the other with definitely good news – Mass Effect 2 has a launch date. However, the cloud to the silver lining of a Sims 3 delay is that The Godfather II and Dragon Age: Origins have been delayed too.

The delays are a consequence of EA’s announced loses of US$641 million for the third quarter of last year. To cut costs, the company plans to close 12 of its facilities and increase redundancies to 11 per cent (1,100 staff) according to gamesindustry.biz

Dragon Age: Origins was originally scheduled for release on the PC in Q2 of this year but this has now been moved to the last half of this year. The console version was always due out for Christmas 2009, so we could see a simultaneous multi-platform launch for the ‘spiritual successor’ to Baldur’s Gate.

Teenage girls will have to wait until 3 June to get their hands on The Sims 3. The game had originally been slated to launch this month. EA CEO John Riccitiello claims that the delay will give EA ‘additional time to build the worldwide marketing campaign’.

The Godfather II, which sounds reasonably fun if EuroGamer is be believed, was also due out this month, but has been put off until ‘later this year.’

Via Bit-tech.net

Let us know your thoughts on why The Sims 3 needs four month’s worth of marketing effort put behind it, and whether you think Dragon Age and Mass Effect 2 will be worth the wait.