EA Cancels "Over a Dozen" Unannounced Projects

[John Funk]

EA Cancels "Over a Dozen" Unannounced Projects

More bad news from EA: Along with the 1500 job cuts announced yesterday, CEO John Riccitiello has said that the company has taken the axe to "over a dozen" unannounced projects in development.

Yesterday during EA's quarterly earnings call with investors, the publishing giant announced that 200 at Need For Speed developer EA Black Box [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/95994-EA-Heavily-Cuts-Jobs-at-Mythic-Tiburon-Black-Box-and-Redwood], which was also one of the affected studios this time around.

CEO John Riccitiello said that in addition to the job cuts, the publisher had pulled the plug on twelve or so titles in development that had yet to be announced, judging the games to no longer be worth the price - or the risk.

"Electronic Arts has a core slate of games labels and sports franchises that we will iterate on an annual or bi-annual basis," explained Riccitiello, "All of them are selling or have sold in their most recent edition 2 million units or more ... after that, we've got The Sims and Hasbro, and frankly anything that doesn't measure up to looking like it can pencil out to be a very high profit contributor and high unit seller got cut from our title slate from this point going forward."

This is bad news for people who may have been hoping for a sequel to last year's Mirror's Edge, as Riccitiello has previously said that he was disappointed with the first-person parkour game's performance. Dead Space and its Wii cousin Dead Space Extraction, on the other hand, may have performed sufficiently well to warrant a sequel (though cuts made at developer Visceral may suggest otherwise).

My personal feelings on the matter are nicely summed up by the picture you see here above and to the right, taken from "Big Bad" [http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/11/5/], a soulless corporation that existed only to churn out sports sequels, to acquire young, thriving studios and put them to work on crappy movie tie-ins, and to cut corners and rush development, all for the sake of a few extra bucks.

EA might have been the gaming Antichrist, but in the past two or so years, the publisher made a concerted effort to turn its act around. Riccitiello stated that he didn't see any inherent conflict between a move in the right direction [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/88837-EA-No-Conflict-Between-Creativity-and-Profitability].

Unfortunately, moving in the right direction apparently means that the company has axed 3200 jobs since last October, and if Riccitiello's comments here are any indication, we may see the New EA turning back into the Old EA - a company that emphasizes profitability as the bottom line, with a focus on safe titles that the higher-ups know will sell.

And that would honestly be one goddamn shame.

(Via IGN [http://games.ign.com/articles/104/1043658p1.html])

Permalink

 

[JWAN]

well, I cant say I'm surprised.

they always go with the "safe bet"

let me explain "safe bet":

a game they have done over a dozen times, in their sleep and have released only now with a new skin/Every 5 years a new game engine.

Battlefield Vietnam was the last EA game I truly enjoyed because they added a radio/helicopters that added new game play mechanics like dropping jeeps/ boats/tanks behind enemy territory and then rocketing the fuck out of enemy bases.

 

[Amnestic]

FFFFFFFFUUUUU-

Wonderful! Just...wonderful. And by "Wonderful" I mean "Unabashedly shite." I suppose this was expected what with all the pink slips that just got printed but still ;/

"Electronic Arts has a core slate of games labels and sports franchises that we will iterate on an annual or bi-annual basis," explained Riccitiello, "All of them are selling or have sold in their most recent edition 2 million units or more ... after that, we've got The Sims and Hasbro, and frankly anything that doesn't measure up to looking like it can pencil out to be a very high profit contributor and high unit seller got cut from our title slate from this point going forward."

Sigh. That's business, I suppose.

 

[zombie711]

dang is medal of honor is already cancled. that only took 2 hours

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

EA "Revitalizing" the Medal of Honor Series

EA Cancels "Over a Dozen" Unannounced Projects

I'm with John and Gabe...do people actually enjoy being screwed over? I'm confuzzled.

 

[DeadlyYellow]

Well so much for ever hoping for a new Road Rash.

 

[Littaly]

GAAAAAAAAAAAH!

Mirror's Edge was one of those games I just wanted to see a sequel on, so much screwed up potential, they deserved a second shot :-/

Seriously, this sets a really bad example to other companies. It's like "HEY! You can either be hated and survive or be loved and die"

 

[Kollega]

Well,Riccitello was originally responsible for axing Westwood studios and tried to retcon Trip Hawkins out of company's history,if memory serves right. So it's not big surprise. Too bad we won't be seeing Mirror's Edge 2,though.

Also thanks for precision strike with link to TVTropes. I can resist,others are not as lucky.

 

[DrunkWithPower]

So, EA can now stand for "Eventually Activision" now. I would bet Activision is eating this up with it's silver spoon.

 

[saejox]

something fishy going on.

Might it be to lower stocks prices. and after that an easy buy for somebody.

I have seen things like that before, fake bankrupt and "our savior X company" comes and saves us.

do you remember Microsoft buys EA rumors, could it be true?

 

[Aac18]

Sigh that comic pretty much sums up my feelings. People need to learn to stop complaining about EA making repetitive games and then not buying the genuinely innovative games they do make (like dead space, mirrors edge, etc).

Also if one of those axed titles was Dungeon Keeper 3 then there will be hell to pay!

 

[Bigeyez]

That comic is so true and so sad at the same time. EA finally tries to innovate and introduce new IPs and we as consumers just showed them that what we want is the same trash year after year. /sigh...

 

[LorChan]

That's depressing. Especially the Mirror's Edge sequel. There was a lot of potential there. All they had to do was stop making us fight so much, fix the shitty cutscenes, hire an actual writer... The gameplay was the seller, and the story had so much going for it in theory. (But has anybody ever drawn or found a plot graph of Mirror's Edge? Yikes :/)

GAAAAAAAAAAAH!

Mirror's Edge was one of those games I just wanted to see a sequel on, so much screwed up potential, they deserved a second shot :-/

I GAAAAAAAAAAAH! with you comrade. I suppose I'll just have to keep playing the first one, weeping into my ice-cream as I do.

One more for the Mirror's Edge pity party, over here!

 

[Pirce]

Great, and I was really rooting for EA. Did my best to support them and help them from turning back to the dark side. All of you, the ones who don't support good games. Who are still buying anything Activision throws out despite the fact that they are SCREWING you. This is you're fault. I hope Modern Warfare 2 was worth it, I hope you enjoy looking at you're kids when they asked you what you did to stop the damnation of an industry.

 

[Undercover]

Dammit John, I was having such a good morning until I read this article.

As a independant mutimedia producer just starting out and shopping for funding, stories like this scare the hell out of me, because I would like to freelance for companies like EA, BioWare, UbiSoft (Yes, Ubisoft) and the like, but if game developers (Or more importantly their faceless investors) keep making announcements like this, then I think I might just have to stick to my own plans and just work for myself.

What EA is doing really sucks, but its a decision based on profits, which is what business is all about. But axing a dozen unannounced titles before they even get off the drawing board seems a bit rash. I mean besides their investors freaking out, what reason could they have for doing that? Is it a lack of confidence in the market, or a lack of confidence in their ability to create original titles that gamers will want to purchase and play?

As for the employees who are getting laid off, perhaps they should all get together and start their own studio, where decisions are based on taking risks and coming up with new and innovative games, rather than just churning out the same thing over and over with shinier graphics.

 

[Darkstar370]

I'm with John and Gabe...do people actually enjoy being screwed over?

Of course they do.

 

[Danpascooch]

Goddamnit! If they want to roll over and play dead that is fine, but they are NOT taking Bioware with them, YOU HEAR ME EA! YOU DON'T GET TO RUIN BIOWARE!!!

also, there should be a freaking law that says if a sequel to something is cut before it was announced, they need to announce that they were going to make it but it was cut

I hate not knowing whether a sequel is coming or not, every so often it takes like 6 years for them (by 'them' I mean any game company) to decide to make a sequel, so when it is canceled and they don't tell anyone, big fans wonder for years sometimes if a sequel is coming, and that sucks

lastly, it would be genious marketing if EA released trailers for the top 5 most promising out of those 12 unnanounced games they cut, and let people vote on which was the best, then made the one that got the most votes.

 

[mokes310]

To be totally honest...I've not been happy with a great deal of products that EA has released in the past couple years. I found Dead Space to be rather boring, Mirrors Edge was at least five years too late, going on and on, they just haven't captured me. I guess they can go back to the business model that has worked for them in the past, but if they really wanted to impress me: actually FINISH a sports game that has as few glitches as possible (looking at you FIFA!) and revolutionize the way we play sports games.