EA Feels The Recession, Cuts Jobs And Titles
GamesIndustry.biz is reporting that Electronic Arts is planning to cut 1500 staff along with axing many ‘œblockbuster’ titles in order to save $100 million annually. The cuts are to be in areas such as corporate and publishing, with the biggest losses (900) occurring in the development sector.
EA’s CEO John Riccitiello said that it was never pleasant to see staff being cut and that: “We think the cuts we have made are very, very aggressive. We’ve cut teams, we’ve cut corporate, we’ve cut overhead [and] we’ve cut publishing’. EA has also stated that it will scale back its game production from around 60 titles last year, to 50 this year and ‘œhigh 30s’ in 2010.
EA is looking to focus on the more stable franchises such as FIFA, Madden or the recently announced revitalisation of the Medal of Honour franchise. He said titles need to be able to push 2 million units or more to remain safe. Riccitiello bluntly stated that:
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.
This seems like a fairly inevitable step for EA, especially when sales for titles such as Mirror’s Edge (personally EA’s bravest game in a long time) or Dead Space didn’t perform, despite some critical acclaim. New intellectual properties from all companies have tended to not sell well in the recent climate, with the majority of games released in the last year and continuing into next year, being sequels (Forza 3, Modern Warfare 2, Bioshock 2). While I can understand EA’s need to cut the newer titles, it’s a shame to see EA reverting back to releasing only the annual titles, however in the face of cutting staff it’s an obvious step.
Source: IndustryGamers.com
They really made an effort to change and this is what happens. That 2 million units quote should be very concerning to people especially Wii owners who aren’t interested in any My Sims or sports games.
The ‘tak is reporting as rumor that there are lots of layoffs happening at Maxis (Sims and Spore) and the EA LA team that’s in charge of C&C4. What they heard from an unnamed source indicated that a majority of the C&C4 team would be let go once the game ships. I would call Command & Conquer a “blockbuster” title, but are the sales for C&C franchise really that low to justify letting go most of the development team?
I read that EA already acquired Playfish as well. Does that mean we can expect more games from them?