EA to Cancel 12 Major IPs and cut 1,500 JobsWritten By Roy
Way back in the past, EA had this habit of taking a good game studio and destroying it, making it produce inferior games before destroying the studio. At least, that’s how it felt. EA ate up a good few studios in its time, and many of them stopped producing quality games the day they signed themselves over. Then it seemed that EA were changing their ways and beginning to produce more worthwhile games and work with studios more to produce something a little different.
Then, it went back to its old ways. EA has just announced it’s going to cut 1,500 jobs by April 2010 and will drop 12 major games to get a hold of its development costs.
To be fair, not all of those job cuts are developers. Around 500 are from the publishing side of the business and even 100 are corporate positions. The job cuts will save the company around £59 million annually.
The news followed a less than stellar performance by EA who posted a financial loss of $391 million net, up nearly a quarter from the same time last year.
John Riccitiello, EA’s Chief Executive said:
“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 two million units or more.”
Since then EA has gone on to acquire social games developer Playfish for a deal worth well over £100 million.
It’s not unfair for a company to start trying to save costs my getting rid of things that aren’t making enough money, but we’re not entirely convinced. Hopefully the layoffs will result in some more quality, independent studios producing interesting and innovative new games.
The News Release was written by: Roy who produces professional