EA cancels 12 games, lays off 1500 jobs
Ea has announced that more than 1500 staff will be made redundant by April 2010.
EA hopes to save $100 million USD annually as a result of the lay-offs and cancellations, with the redundancies spread across all devisions. 900 developers, 500 publishing staff and 100 corporate suits are set to go, according to reports.
The studios which will be most heavily affected are EA Redwood, Tiburon, Mythic and EA Black Box.
The news follows on from EA's recently published financial reports, which revealed a net loss of $391 million across the July - September period, an increase of 26 percent compared to the same period in 2008.
"Laying off employees and closing facilities is never pleasant," said EA Chief John Riccitiello. "We have a lot of compassion for those impacted but these cuts are essential for transforming our company.[/i]"
"Electronic Arts has a core slate of games label and sports franchises that we will iterate on a either annual or bi-annual basis. And I think you know what those major titles are - all of them are selling or have sold in their most recent edition 2 million units or more," he continued.
"After that, we’ve got The Sims and Hasbro, and frankly anything that doesn’t measure up to looking like it can pencil out to be in very high profit contributor and high unit seller got cut from our title slate from this point going forward."
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Discuss in the forums ReplyThat's a bit harsh no?
The worst of it is they'll be cancelling anything remotely innovative and ploughing more cash in to ea sports
OUCH!
Look out, Activision - seems like EA might want their crown of crap back :(
It was only the beginning on 2008 that EA tried to 'reinvent' itself with a new image, shouting about new IP. They wouldn't stop bragging about Dead Space and Mirror's Edge.
I understand both games underperformed (Dead Space particularly) but they really should of reconsidered their expectations.
While a $391m quarterly loss is not to be sniffed at, I still had (admittedly naive) hopes that EA would ultimately find a good balance between new IP's and annual sequels.
how about dont buy the company when you dont have the cash you idiots and you would be only $91m down
Even then they would still lay off those individuals as the are only shaving off 100 mil with those 1500 jobs.
That would surely have rejuventated their coffers !
You will find that this happens quite a lot, as companies dont pay taxes on loses, and aquiring more asserts. Also makes a good excuse to not pay staff so much.
If I was one of the 1500 employees.. seeing how 300M was spent on buying more, to only to get laid off. Also working on a game isnt easy, it's not a 9 to 5 job, the amount of life, time and missed oppertunities that goes into an AAA game to get told you're being laid off just isnt nice.
A lot of blue-chip/large corporations harbour very capable employees who never get close to realising their potential. When hands are forced, i.e. redundancy, those killing time in the office may be driven to form new partnerships and create new opportunities not possible under the EA umbrella.
I look forward to (I for one welcome...) a slew of new developers, coders, artists and producers, taking things into their own hands, and releasing quality product which would never have been conceived at EA.
Just my 2 cents/pence (worth about the same).
Cleggy.
MM-HMM.
The market is on a down turn anyways right now. Give it two years and it will be nice and saturated again with so many games - single and multiplayer - that we dont know what to do with ourselves. At least theres some quality titles to look forward to. If not just check for that 4.99/9.99 special on steam.
I wonder just what EA think caused this turn of events?
I would guess simple business, too many products over budget and not enough income from most titles. They dont have any problems with finding a publisher, so thats no excuse, or maybe that is the problem.
How about making games to budget that a lot of people actually want to buy?
Black box does skate and they were listed in the article as one of the studios worst hit by this.
I really need to find out for sure what games are canceled.
Hope skate3 still on for may :(