f13.net

Pulled from Gamasutra:

You can catch the rest here (http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=21611). Let's hope Bioware isn't one of those 9 studios being affected in this.

Of course it is.  It hasn't produced a game in the last 12 months, right? Therefore it's a drain and not a faucet, so it gets cut.

Those houses that have shat out a derivative '0X or 2, 3, 4 title in the last year or so and had it sold will be the ones others are merged in to.

Since the Need for Speed franchise has gone to utter shit, I'm not surprised Black Box got consolidated.

Well, let's take a look at what studios EA actually has:

EALA (formerly Dreamworks Interactive, and fused with part of Westwood):  Command & Conquer, Lord of the Rings, Medal of Honor, Boom Blox.  Also develops mobile titles.

Pandemic (Teams in LA, Brisbane, and Melbourne):  Star Wars Battlefront, Mercenaries, Destroy All Humans, Full Spectrum Warrior.  Currently working on Saboteur.

Tiburon:  Madden, NCAA, Tiger Woods, NASCAR

Redwood Shores:  The Sims, Dead Space, Godfather, Simpsons

Maxis:  Spore

Salt Lake (formerly Headgate Studios): formerly worked on PGA golf games.  Now developing a Nerf title and a Littlest Pet Shop title.

Mythic:  DAOC, Warhammer

Bioware:  Mass Effect, Dragon Age

Bioware Austin:  SW:TOR

EA Montréal:  Army of Two, SSX Blur, Boogie

Black Box:  Need for Speed, Skate

EA Canada:  FIFA Soccer, NBA LIVE, NHL, Fight Night, FaceBreaker, Celebrity Sports Showdown, EA Playground.

Bright Light:  Harry Potter.  Working on Hasbro properties.

Criterion:  Burnout, BLACK

Phenomic:  Settlers

Dice:  Battlefield, Mirror's Edge

EA Mobile Romania:  Mobile games

EA Mobile India:  Also Mobile games

EA China:  EA Sports FIFA Online

Not entirely sure I didn't leave anything out.

Is it bad that kind of hope they do something with Mythic? I also suspect they'll consolidate mobile offices and a few of the places with titles that have been under performing. They may also continue their tradition of shutting down MMO's before they launch by canning Bioware Austin.

I think we should run brackets and bet on who's closing, because at this point, I'm feeling heartless. Fantasy Firings. Let's dance.

Ho Velorath forgot to list Ultima Online under Mythic! *zing*
Or does UO still count with its 25-100k(no clue) subscriber number?

UO is dead. Keeping a Chinese office makes no sense, I can't see EA China being that profitable but I could be wrong as the Chinese are CHEAP. I would wager Bioware Austin gets at least a hiring freeze. Making a F2P RMT MMO with that many people is "doing it wrong." DICE will probably lose a handful of people given how shitty Battlefield Heroes has been received and how poorly ME is performing - I knew they should've given Faith bigger tits. Romania and India serve no purpose. Any studio can make mobile titles. All they need is a programmer, designer and artist. Army of Two did OK but SSX comes out too slowly and costs too much to make, so I see Montreal getting cuts. The safest studios are Bioware Edmonton, Maxis, and Bright Light, imo.

Edit: I say UO is dead because I simply don't see them keeping it running, Maybe SOE will pick it up take the stupid stuff out and somehow make huge profits off that also.

How many people would cry if they consolidated Mythic with Bioware Austin?

Like, maybe 4.

Edit: Unnecessarily mean.

I'd be surprised if Jacobs doesn't give a "Folks, it's been a lot of fun but it's time for me to move on" speech in a few months.

EA China's main product is FIFA Online.  Apparently they partnered with Neowiz to release it in Korea where they now claim to have 4.4 million subscribers.

After Facebreaker and Celebrity Sports Showdown tanked, I'd expect some cuts at EA Canada (which claims to be the World's largest development studio).

Pandemic has some issues in that Destroy All Humans seems to be going downhill, I don't think they have the Battlefront license anymore (Free Radical was working on Battlefront 3 until their recent closing), and I don't think Mercs 2 did all that well either.

Redwood Shores and Maxis might see some cuts.  Jeff Green (formerly of 1Up, now working on the Sims Animals team or somesuch at EA) mentioned on a recent Gamers with Jobs podcast that the first two projects he was put on after joining EA a couple months back were canceled.

Criterion's only major product right now is Burnout Paradise, which they've been churning out free content for.  Has this content continued to generate enough sales of the game to make it cost effective?  I have no idea.  They're putting out a new Sku for Paradise next month which includes all the free content on the disc.  Other than that I don't know if they've announced any other retail products at the moment.

Mythic would be an obvious choice.

Dice... maybe the Mirror's Edge team will get cut back or folded in with another team for work on the sequel which is supposedly still going to be coming.

Montreal?  Amry of Two was a big enough disappointment that I can see that team getting cut completely.

Oh yeah, Mythic, Bioware and Bioware Austin will all be combined under one umbrella. Obvious suitlogic is obvious: "They're all making Online games!"  New name or perhaps keeping the Bioware one, since they're the ones releasing a game.

Pandemic was the next one to tick off my, "Nope they're gone" sense.  Maybe merged with Dice.  Shooters are all alike, rite?

EA Montreal and EA Canada being merged under one banner also seems rather "duh."

As for the 9th? Maxis will be gone or merged elsewhere to continue shitting out patches for Sims games as Spore took a spoor.

heh after reading your guys casually merging all these studios I'm sitting here waving my hands in the air going ZOMG ZOMG but where is the spirit and soul of the studio, you cannot merge Pandemic and Dice they have two distinct souls. :P I hate both studios for different reasons. Now if you closed both and reopened under a different name.

Same with merging Mythic and Bioware, or even the two separate Bioware studios since we know they are on different games.

Of course I'm saying this just as a gamer with no business sense in mind. Plus a snarky nostalgic memory of their past games of which most of you with foul mouths wouldn't understand in a polite manner.

The soul of Mythic and Bioware Austin is more in line with eachother than Bioware Austin and Bioware Edmonton.

Those souls were part of the purcahse deals. EA doesn't leave anything on the table.  :why_so_serious:

But neither one has any desire to run the other, nor any desire to move.  It would be very difficult to get either team to pick up and go without losing half of them along the way, and Mythic also has a rather large CS operation in place.

A closure/merger is something you do because either the financials demand it, or because you've squeezed all of the juice out of an acquisition and it's time to bring the corporate soldiers you sent for reinforcements home.  Mythic and BioWareAustin are still too early in their borgification for that (dunno much about BioWare Demonton).

Doesn't mean it couldn't happen.  But which shops get merged into which, and who gets a bungee-line rescue from the wreckage, will be the true acid test of whether we are really seeing a "New EA".

I'm going to lay the long shot: At least one major American sports franchise will now be getting developed over-seas.  Maybe they test the waters by starting with one of the non-central pieces of the franchises (like the Street spinoffs).

--Dave

As part of this, EA should fire Jacobs, Barnett and anyone else in power at Mythic and headhunt someone from Blizzard who would be better at running an MMO then they have been.

Like the Blizzard janitorial staff.
 :why_so_serious:

Of that list, I'd keep Redwood shores (Dead space was cool, Sims is Sims), Bioware (just for their history mostly, maybe they should go as well, not really a good reason to keep them) and Dice (Mirror's Edge had some novelty value, gotta reward at least trying). I wouldn't miss the rest. Of course "the rest" probably make 80% of the profits. I'm glad I'm not running the company.

Redwood Shores is their HQs. If they close that down it'll be the end :awesome_for_real:

EA Canada probably won't see much happen to them. They're still profitable, though I wouldn't be surprised to see more than Blackbox consolidated into that building. I expect EA Montreal to be moved to Vancouver and that office shut down.

I'm sure it would save them money to shut down the small office they have here in Toronto and move it to the EA Canada building. - It would seem it has disappeared already.

I'm ready to see a Tibirium like exposure. Was it the same Black Box people guiding Need for Speed: Underground, then Need for Speed: Underground 2, then Need for Speed: Most Wanted. Then the dropoffs started with Carbon, Pro street, to Undercover. I understand there was 2 teams, were they both Black Box teams like Team A and B just alternating products each year?

How was undercover released seemingly not playing smoothly on the PC, and its initial starting race car such a clunker, compared to NFS:Underground/2 where it gives you a smoothly running car to experience what the future holds then drops you into the newbie car. Most Wanted exposed you to great car at beginning then gave you newbie car.

Or was EA headhonchos just to slow to realize the problem by 3 years and 3 games to realize wow these people lost their minds and could not recover or were these people scamming the money and each product.

I keep hearing John Davidson screaming for several podcasts....Each version of NFS has sold 6-8 million copies across all the platforms released. On one hand I believe him cuz they did push a lot of versions out there, but that can't be true for the latest versions otherwise why shutter the franchise.

Black Box, and the Need for Speed and Skate franchises are getting absorbed into EA Canada (they're pretty much located in the same area), so they aren't really shuttering the Need for Speed franchise.

Yeah, ever since EA taking it in the shitpipe hit the headlines, I've been thinking that UO may have dodged it's last bullet. Strangely enough, I find myself thinking it's probably as good a time as any to finally put the old girl to bed. Not because of ninjas, or elves, or Trammel, or any particular design choice, but because the whole thing is just really creaky and neglected. For some reason it was just this year that the game started to really feel hopelessly old, even to me. I could go into why, but I won't bother. My account hasn't been active in months.

I can't see SOE picking it up, either. For one, UO being a spaghetti pile of legacy code that even it's own devs no longer understood was a running joke all the way back when SWG was the new shiny. Just getting it up on it's feet under new management would have to be a nightmare compared to stuff like Matrix or Vanguard, both of which were more or less standard 3D dikus, and both of which were young and not tangled up by a decade's worth of tinkering by multiple generations of developers.

Besides which, EA won't sell it even if SOE wants it. They'll just kill it out of apathy, or fear of looking stupid if SOE somehow did manage to do something good with it. They'll kill it, and the few tens of thousands of people who are UO players and not really MMO players in the general sense at all, people who are just plain never going to play WoW ever, will pile into the freeshard scene. Which is really why I don't care if EA kills it. They can pull the plug tomorrow, and if I suddently get the urge to play UO five years from now, I'll be able to.

This may have been said already, but my understanding is that Pandemic has already seen some pretty heavy staff cuts. Whether or not they are forced to merge is another story.

Maybe I'm wrong on this, but it would seem to me that MMOs would be one of the first things to go in a crunch time.  When a company wants to cut overhead they cut people because they are one of the biggest overhead costs.  I would be very surprised to not see Mythic at least feel a little bit of this.  It will be interesting to see what they do with the Star Wars MMO.  The IP sure can sell a lot in and of itself, however the Old Republic is a bit out there for most "main stream" Star Wars fans. 

The trade-off analysis of MMOs depends on how long-tail the management viewpoint is on them. MMOs can generate more revenue over a longer period of time than any single player title. However, if cuts have to be made today, expect any unreleased MMOs to go on "official hiatus" unless they are seen as a guaranteed hit.

Also: paid interns, CS and QA staff would probably be the first to go from any project.

That would depend on how far along the MMO is. If one is fairly far along, and isn't completely unanticipated, they'd want to at least try to recoup as much development cost as possible from the initial box sales. Box sales for recent MMO's have been doing well. People are bored of WoW and, even though most new MMO's suck, are at least willing to try them. EA would be more likely to dump early projects that they haven't invested much in, or projects that are already live and dwindling.

Such as what happened with WAR. And they got, what? A month's sales spike out of it...  :awesome_for_real:

everything that EA has or is planning is dead unless it has a franchise or media tie-in.  Srsly.  So FIFA and the like may still exist.  And Spore will be milked till they turn the lights out.  But ya -- this is yer father's EA, all over again.

This is going to be just about every publisher/developer the way things are going.  One big flop is all it takes to decimate a studio.  Just ask Factor 5 and Free Radical.

I found out in an article over the weekend that Free Radical paid its staff for overtime. So ends that experiment!  :oh_i_see:

I hope not, at least for Pandemic AU's sake.  They already had 2 sets of layoffs this year, first set was due to WB pulling the batman license for the game they were working on, then another set of layoffs when EA did the blanket layoff.  Would be a shame to see it further reduced.

Yeah, these were the staff cuts I was referring to. Right now I'm guessing that selling out to EA doesn't seem to have been such a great idea.

My guess. Based on not much.

Either BioWare, Bioware Austin, or Mythic is in trouble next time around, but purchase is too recent so too many EA management will be invested in them right now.

Pandemic mostly made shitty games anyway :( They were not the most creative or interesting studio. I remember back when they merged with Bioware and all I could think of was "what? why?"

I can't imagine they'd be any better off right now if they hadn't sold out to EA.

Despite wanting to see Jacobs and co strung up, I tend to agree with you on that point.


Why did you strikethrough Criterion? The Burnout series appears to be doing quite well, unlike the stale Need for Speed franchise.

Out of those 3 I'd say Bioware Austin, then Mythic if it comes down to it.

Bioware Austin simply because they haven't actually released anything yet. Mythic, well, its future depends on how well DAOC: Origins does and if they can turn things around on Warhammer. I think Bioware is probably ok simply because while they don't sell millions, the stuff they make is pretty much guranteed to see a profit. It might be small, but it's a profit.

I don't see DAOC: Origins doing anything wroth a damn for more than a month.

Maxis has been a blackhole for years. Spore failed. Close it. Then Will Wright can start over and do something good.

Bioware is safe for now. The CEO is EA was a venture capital partner in the firm that sold Bioware to EA. Too much egg on the face if they shut it down now. Dragon Age will see the loght of day and thereupon will hang the fate of the studio.

Spore failed?


huh.

We will have to wait for the next 10Q to see real numbers but I had seen news blurbs putting Spore sales into the 2 million unit range.  Not sure what 'success' is but I don't think that's remotely close to failure.

I hadn;t seen anything that high. That would not be failure in an absolute sense, but for a game in the works for 10 years, it isn't a roaring success either. I never hear or read anyone talking about the game.

They were shooting for another The Sims/The Sims 2. So far it doesn't look like it'll come even close to that franchise.

I think that last month there were three Sims 2 titles on the top 10 sales list (and Sims 3 on the way)?  A mediocre to average performance on Spore isn't going to cause EA to slash Will Wrights budget anytime soon.

Will doesn't work on The Sims. All The Sims people got moved from the East Bay Maxis studio to Redwood Shores. Maxis is now just Spore.

Edit: I should say the old Maxis is now just Spore. They may still keep the Maxis name for branding purposes on The Sims, I haven't looked at a box recently.

The cover of The Sims 2 has EA logo only (unless Maxis is tiny or on the back or both.)

http://www.amazon.com/Sims-2-Double-Deluxe-Pc/dp/B001444IN6/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=videogames&qid=1229981176&sr=8-1

I am fairly certain UO has quite a few more subscribers than DAOC currently.

I know it's fun to doomcast but would it be cool if I placed bets on YOUR imminent unemployment? (And that's what a Mythic/Bioware consolidation would be - the Northern Virginia housing market precludes anyone from ever moving if they don't want to eat a loss of a half million or so)

If there is a forum where devs bitch about players all the time and how they aren't playing their MMO right, feel free.

Or, better yet, pay me a heap of money, then blog about it when I fail to deliver what has been promised with fire twirling and dancing girls.

OR: Welcome to your audience.

If I were working at an EA studio right now, I think speculation on message boards would be the least of my concerns at the moment.

Because it felt like an easily transferable franchise based in the wrong place. I also struckthrough Black Box for the same reason.

And anyone working for EA has my sympathy if it comes to it. (fuck, anyone working for EA has my sympathy on general principles)

But I guarantee that .....

1) People affected are more worried about what EA think than what I think.

and

2) People already have been doomcasting my job on this and other websites and it doesn't bother me much.

So LOTR: Conquest demo is up on PSN. Doesn't sound too good. Pandemic was already in trouble and this doesn't seem like it will do anything to help.

It's terrible. But as I said, Pandemic does not make good games.

I disagree.  I think Criterion has been building a very strong connection with their community since Paradise released.  You can't just send the franchise off to another studio and not expect to alienate a lot of the fans.

Seems EA thought the same thing.

Did you just necro a thread to quote yourself?

Fucking kids...  :awesome_for_real:

EDIT: I have to agree with your assessment of Pandemic though.

You missed the point by a long shot. Schild as pointing out that EA is rumored to have just cut Pandemic Brisbane loose with the LA studio still up in the air.

But, uh, you get some points for trying, I think. :uhrr:

In a piece of gallow's humour, Gamespot AU released their glowing recap of Aus / NZ studio games for 2009 (http://au.gamespot.com/news/blogs/spot-on/909183774/26743891/aussie-games-to-watch-in-2009.html?om_act=convert&om_clk=picks&tag=picks;title;4), including Pandemic:

I didn't bother to check it (too lazy, don't care enough), but I knew something Pandemic was getting the axe.  The necro self quote by a mod is still hilarious.

I'm not a mod.

I would've liked Mirror's Edge a lot more if there was more game, more platforming, and less shooting.

True - you're old school, you're a ROM hack.

FIFY

That whole "I'm cynical, I don't care and I'm too jaded to do anything" bit is tired whether you're old or not.

That's because sitting on your ass and clicking a link is HARD!

What link? And what about schild's title says "he's the owner of the site"? (which is my bassackwards way of saying he should get that title).

Firstly, I can't do anything about it, I don't own EA.  Secondly, it would be cynicism if I could do something about it but didn't think it worth the effort to try.  Really, I'm just indifferent to the fate of Pandemic.  I have better things to do with my time, like browse F13.


Moderator, Super Moderator, Administrator, etc., etc.  They can all ban me arbitrarily, I generally don't trouble myself with distinctions.  I guess I probably should with you because I like your forum and all that (Can you get banned for starfucking an admin?  Never saw anyone go for that reason during the recent cultural revolution).


 :grin:

Can you use wildcards/variables in titles?  Schild should have a title that say "%name, I own you."

So, now that like every studio is screwed, isn't it time for Valve to crush them all?

Where's my Halflife MMO?

I like Sheepherder. He's kind of an asshole.

In addition to the rumored cuts to Mythic reported by Joystiq, Gamasutra is receiving reports of cuts to Tiburon as well (http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=21931).

Slightly updated details. (http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=22150)

Terrible news for a lot of people.

That loss is roughly on par with how shitty Madden sold this year. I've said for a while that the company was built on the house of Madden and when that topples, the giant has fallen. Looks like it actually came true, whoops.

I game a lot with a guy that works for EA in Florida.  I'll have to give him a call to see if he still has a job. 

As much as I'm not a fan of EA, I always hate seeing talented folks lose their jobs. 

Dragon Age now 2H 2009. Is that news?

the actual release (http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20090203006591&newsLang=en)

So yeah.  Look for Mythic and even Bioware to be sold off.  Yeah I like them both, but I am doomcasting EA.

Edit: 

Cripes.  They lost $1B in 2008 YoY.  Someone page Abagadro to this thread for a real analysis.

That loss includes impairment charges, i.e. when you buy another company and it doesn't meet expectations, you have to write-off a portion of what you paid. Those kinds of charges are not considered as operating losses.  Bottom line, ERTS still made money before all the accounting noise but things are ugly.

It's news, but I can't say that changing the release window from a vague "sometime in the first half of '09" to a vague "sometime in the second half of '09" is big news.  I seem to recall similar happenings with Mass Effect.

This is where Richard Garriot somehow cons someone into giving him money to buy Mythic and Lord British comes back to UO!  Woooaooo!

*cough*
*hack*
*spit*

Fuck, sorry. Dunno what came over me.

EA in trouble will change the whole landscape.  That's why I find it noteworthy.  (Not because folks are losing work in a difficult time.)  Same situation for everyone but Vivendi it seems. 

WoW dungeon raids are immune to global economic recession, apparently.

I'm guessing the huge huge money paid for BioWare and Pandemic doesn't look like such a good investment right now.

Interesting idea, but I think EA still technically owns Ultima. Maybe Garriott could buy both Ultima and Mythic....

And launch Mark Jacobs into space?

Garriot can just log in to RP as Lord British while the developers talk a bunch of shit to him to make him think he has input. I think that's pretty much what Raph did with him. Mark Jacobs we'll make the guy who has to read all the posts on Stratics for the dev team.

I'd be very surprised if Bioware got sold off any time soon (the main studio, not the Austin one) given that EA just went out of their way mention rough release dates not only for Dragon Age, but for Mass Effect 2 as well (Q1 2010).

It's the first year there was no PC version of Madden!

 :why_so_serious:

Even as a joke that qualifies as "dumb."

I'm still allowed to worry. It's my nature.

Is your nature just not to worry? Or is it the "chance favors the prepared mind" nature?   :oh_i_see:

I hate seeing anyone go through troubling times, particularly when so much is out of their control. Regardless of whether you're worried or not, good luck man!

Start working on Wii ports for Dragon Age and Mass Effect and you should be ok. (http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=22152)

lol @ horrendous advice.

Unless Dragon Age is a set of casual party games based on Medieval Times.

Riccotello needs to put his fucking money where his mouth is. The EA Sports releases on the Wii have been almost universally mediocre to shit, with the exception of Tiger Woods.

That's a symptom of the system, not the game. :awesome_for_real:

Seriously though, golf on the Wii is easy. Tennis? Sure. But anything that requires complex and fine tuned controls is a mess. The thing is simply a children's system. I'm not making fun of it here mind you, it's just the reality of the situation. Sure, No More Heroes came out on it and Mad World and Fragile are also. But as far as the input mechanism and precision of it, it's just not made for fine-tuned gaming. Shame, really. Never be as good as a guncon for arcade shooters and never be as good as a controller for complex games.