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.
Hi guys!
First of all: congratulations to 500 episodes π There are not many (good) podcasts who have so many long episode. Long because nearly every podcast of your show is about an hour. ItΒ΄s nice to hear Paul again on the show .. he has such a nice humor, i love it π
Regarding the topics in this episode: i really like POP Figures π I have all 11 from Magic The Gathering, all from Back to the future and all from Michael Jackson. i like them as decoration for my gaming room π
These games like skylanders, Lego Dimensions and so on: i dont like it that much .. its too expensive and the game itself is not that … intersting in my opinion :/
It was nice to hear, that you are Star Trek Fans (or something similar like that ^^). Did you watch the latest series? Discovery? It think it was quite nice so far, even if it was strange to see the Klingons like that π
To the question of the week: my choice of the Parker Boardgame would be Monopoly, because i played so often as a little kid (ok i did not have any other boardgame …).
Keep on the good work guys and thanks again for your Podacst!
Greetings from germany,
Ralf
sorry forget something: the new title song is way better then the one before π but not as good as the one you had very man epidsodes ago. I already told it Jonah, but i dont know which episode it was (not the Robocop or Mass effect one).