EA Closing Need for Speed, Skate Dev. Black Box, 'At Least' Eight Others
With Black Box closed, EA will relocate the studio's development teams and "associated game franchises" to a nearby office in Burnaby, British Columbia. The other "studio and publishing locations" facing closure were not named in the announcement.
Overall, EA will axe around 1,000 employees, roughly 10% of its global workforce. Previously, the publisher said it would cut 6% of its employees under the plan. The majority of these actions are planned to occur before March 31, 2009.
EA expects the plan will "result in annual cost savings of approximately $120 million," along with restructuring charges of around $55-65 million over the coming quarters.
The publisher also declared a newfound focus on "hit games with higher margin opportunities," following word that it will be canceling several unspecified games. However, the company stressed that it is still "committed to taking creative risks."
Black Box recently released the critical failure Need for Speed: Undercover and aided in the creation of Skate It for Wii and Nintendo DS. Skate 2, presumed to be the team's last Black Box-branded title, will hit PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on January 21.
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sammyl
replySo, uh, what other studios are they closing?
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I really wish we knew.
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The other "studio and publishing locations" facing closure were not named in the announcement.
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Well they are merging The Sims, Casual group, who ever runs pogo, and Will Wright's studio as one group with Rod Humble (sp?) leading it. That probably counts for several groups there. I wouldn't be surprised if Ultima Online finally closes up shop.
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I don't know about the last year, but Will usually had a small team that was largely separate from the rest of the EA grinder. Think of it as an isolated thinktank which would do innovative stuff before rolling a huge number of production people onto it. Isolation included a separate office, etc. This was preserved when the Sims team was moved, though I don't know if it had lasted since then.
...or that is my understanding from ex-Sims devs.-
The Emeryville Spore team is rather large. I don't have precise numbers, but they aren't a 5 man think tank. When The Sims 2 team was moved from Walnut Creek to EARS, Will and the Spore team moved to Emeryville (or something like that).
But, the main point of my comment is that Will Wright is a part of EA Games whereas Sims is its own division that's paired with EA Casual now.-
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I was thinking small relative to EAs past team sizes (300 on Godfather?), but didn't realize it was that large. I was thinking closer to 30-50. Thank you for the correction.
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Folding Pandemic into EALA?
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