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EA Layoffs are Bad for Gamers
Why the pursuit of art eventually has to bow to the pursuit of cash.
Written by Jon Seddon, 10 November 2009
Whilst Activision are probably trying to find places to put all of their spare cash this morning, after the launch of Modern Warfare 2, EA are making earnings calls and announcing major job losses. Any time a company, even one as large as EA make 1500 people redundant, you know the problems they are facing aren't small. The scale of these job losses will potentially touch every part of the EA business and it's a genuine concern to me as to exactly where the axe will fall.
Time to make some noise!Chief financial officer, John Brown stated in a call to investors that the job losses would be made up of 900 developers, 500 people in publishing and 100 people from corporate. The loss of all those developers will be accompanied by a reduction in the number of games being released by the publishing giant. John Riccitiello suggests that 12 large unannounced projects will be shelved, but gave no details on what they may be.
Customize your board with your team name or even your own graphics.Rumours suggest that the studios affected will be Black Box, Redwood Shores, Tiburon and Mythic, but as yet this is just speculation.
When John Riccitiello arrived at EA they were generally considered to be the enemy of gamers, produced year on year iterations of established franchise without ever really pushes boundaries or new IP. Riccitiello soon changed that with an emphasis given to quality and the development of new IP and this has soon some really good games coming from the publisher. Last year saw a long list of extremely well made games with new IP like Dead Space, Mirror's Edge and Battlefield: Bad Company joined by extremely well made sequels to Madden, FIFA and their other big franchises.
PlayZine Issue 28
For our latest Dead Space coverage, click here to download PlayZine Issue 28 for free.This year EA have further consolidated the level of quality and delivered great titles like Need for Speed: Shift, FIFA 10, Dead Space: Extraction and Dragon Age: Origins.
EA have also supported independent developers with the EA partners programme, which has seen them publish Rock Band, Left 4 Dead and most famously Brutal Legend.
I can't imagine the EA of 3 years ago delivering the quality of games released in the last 24 months and they are genuinely at the top of the tree when you think about standard of both the product and the IP.
If you compare this to Activision, who have now surpassed EA in terms of size then there is a stark contrast with Activision preferring to exploit the few IP that have previously proven to be successful. I'm not saying that Guitar Hero isn't a good game, but do we need 5 iterations in a single year? Activision's idea of original IP seem to be (with the exception of Prototype) a game with a new peripheral. This is a strategy that's been very successful, but apart from Call of Duty I think that the constant sequels and updates will start to lose their grip on the charts and we're already seeing evidence for this is the lower sales of the Guitar Hero franchise.
Let's hope that EA can balance the use of their established brands with a continuing focus on a smaller number a high quality titles, including new IP. If EA cut the number of titles that release this year and next, I fear that we'll get just FIFAs, Maddens and Need for Speeds. My greatest fear at this present point is that the axe will fall on Dead Space and Mirror's Edge. Both titles could really shine in a sequel and I really hope they get the chance.
Dead Space coverage available in PlayZine Issue 28 - click here to download it for free!
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