EA cutting 1,000 jobs
- Posted December 22nd, 2008 at 12:00 EDT by
- 1,182 views
- 7 Comments
You know the gaming industry may be in deeper trouble than expected when one of its largest publishers – namely, Electronic Arts - is looking to cut 1,000 jobs by the end of the Fiscal Year.
EA states that these cuts will save the company roughly USD 120 million dollars over the course of the next year. That's quite the lot sum of cash for 1,000 people. This 10 percent decrease in employees is 4 percent more than the company had originally announced.
On top of the people heading into unemployment, the company is expected to cut or consolidate at least 9 development and publishing studios as well. Among the first studios to receive this treatment is Need for Speed developer EA Black Box, which will be consolidated and moved over to one EA’s British Columbia studios.
While we support the idea of cutting a rapidly waning franchise, it's disheartening to watch so many people cut loose in a time of recession. However, it is good to know that EA plans to focus more on their hit titles than anything else, leaving gamers with a lot better options to spend their hard earned cash on.
"EA is 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."
Comments
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iplayonlysony
- 12:05pm GMT - December 22nd, 2008
- 1
Maybe some of these cuts are to the management, instead of the programmers.
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englishgolfer
- 12:39pm GMT - December 22nd, 2008
- 2
tell me how cutting 1000 jobs is "...[committing] to taking creative risks, investing in new games, leading the industry in the growing mobile and online businesses...."???
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Dragoonlord |
KillZone3000- 1:16pm GMT - December 22nd, 2008
- 3
1000 jobs???
most of these ppl who will get fired already have a plan to go to other companies.
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jigglespsu
- 5:23am GMT - December 23rd, 2008
- 7
@1 Games aren't just written by programmers, they're too busy ... there're artists, modellers, animators, network engineers, server engineers, music production, marketing, PR, QA, countless testers to be beaten with sticks ... programmers usually have a USB device to beat them round the head automatically. For a high-rolling modern console game you're looking at 200 people easy ... somebody has to be in charge and somebody has to make the coffee. The thing that EA are doing is a re-shuffle to pick up the slack between studios and seems like a daily operations cost reduction although I can't say it's good but better than EA completely falling deeply into the red studio by studio. This can only be expected at this very strange financial juncture. I doubt the management will really be reduced, just upping the utilization of those on the coal-face
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