This week’s episode of Gaming Podcast features the first news of 2019 for the podcast, and there’s some juicy items to discuss. There’s no Gaming Flashback, but there is more discussion of the latest Civilization VI: Gathering Storm civs to be discussed.
The news includes:
Let us know what you think.
Electronic Arts is planning to lay off 1,000 employees, approximately 10% of their employees. In this layoff their also consolidating EA Black Box back into EA Canada. EA Black Box was spun off as a studio outside of EA Canada to work on such titles as Need for Speed but, with the layoffs arriving, they’re going to be merging the remainder of EA Black Box into EA Canada by June 2009. The remaining EA Black Box employees will continue working on Skate 2.
The pink slips should be issued by March 31, 2009 and we’re hoping the folks that have lost their jobs will find new jobs as soon as possible. An Electronic Arts representative said:
“This does not mean that the Black Box studio is closing. The studio is moving to our Burnaby campus to share the facility with EAC and other EA teams that operate out of our state-of-the-art facility. We will operate two distinct studios, each with their own distinct culture and teams, out of our Burnaby facility.” (gamespot)
EA hasn’t mentioned any specific franchise cancellation but we’re going to assume something is going to slip, it’s hard to imagine a company can lose 1,000 employees without impacting business operations. If EA was able to layoff 1,000 people without impacting day-to-day business, then they’re definitely hurting in the management department because that would be a ton of waste.
Big companies may cut costs during hard times but they said they’re, “implementing a plan to narrow its product portfolio to focus on hit games with higher margin opportunities. The company remains committed to taking creative risks, investing in new games, leading the industry in the growing mobile and online businesses, and delivering high-quality games to consumers.”
We’re curious just how much EA is willing to risk on “creative” endevours considering publishers are already hesitant to break new ground. The next few years should yield great opportunities for smaller developers to put on their creative hat and open new doors and opportunities for themselves.
[This episode has been re-uploaded due to technical issues]
Scott falls asleep mid-podcast, leaving Jonah and TJ to wrap up the episode. In the meantime, the crew get nostalgic over the “Toys to Life” craze, as this week’s Gaming Flashback is Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure.
This week’s news includes:
Let us know what you think.
This week is Nintendo’s turn at their showcase. But you know what? There’s even more to talk about. The Beyond Good and Evil remaster showcased, Ace Attorney Investigations Collection also getting remastered, the banana clicking game now 9th most popular of all time on Steam, Embracer Group shuts down Pieces Interactive, Life is Strange: Double Exposure ‘will respect both endings’ to original game, FromSoftware warns new Elden Ring Steam Deck bug making game unresponsive, and Microsoft will be at this year’s Gamescom.
The other news includes:
We also have listener feedback. Let us know what you think.
The post Episode 726: Directly Nintendo first appeared on Gaming Podcast.
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