I'm astounded, though not surprised, by how EA is slowly collapsing.

To be fair, the studio is not just closing up shop and everyone being fired, but it is being consolidated with another studio in British Columbia. So the franchises will live on, and key staff will be given the chance to relocate... And probably just half of everybody will be fired.

Still... Need for Speed was not just one of EA's big franchises, but one of the biggest franchises in the industry just a few years ago. Its hard to think of a thing EA has done right with the franchise recently... They oversaturated it with yearly entries, without a good creative vision for any of the recent ones, and appear to have spent incredible sums of money to do so.

Here's a link to the actual press release:

http://news.ea.com/portal/site/ea/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&ndmConfigId=1012492&newsId=20081219005462&newsLang=en

Ok the last few need for speed games have sucked... but the exclimation points are a little unneeded.

I enjoyed Midnight Club Los Angeles more than Need for Speed Undercover! That's how much the latest games suck!

'Bout fuckin time.

Sell NFS to Sony =P

-Well recognized IP

-Fantastic devs

Between Gran Turismo, MortorStorm, Forza, Project Gotham Racing, Burnout, Need For Speed, Grid, Pure, Dirt, Test Drive, Midnight Club, MotoGP, Sega Rally, Ridge Racer, and the dozens of other racers there really is far too many (generic) racing games on the market for studios all studios to be particularly successful producing these games. In my opinion it makes sense for companies like EA to cut back on this genre and to focus more on producing a quality game than to produce yearly iterations.

Thats pretty weird.
Even tho NFS Undecover has had very low critic scores,it sells.
I heard they are giving NFS for Burnout makers.

Agreed. EA can not afford to keep putting out bad games in this market.

The last great need for speed was Most wanted...

You guys are crazy to be celebrating this as a good event. Development studios closing is a bad sign, no matter how you feel about the games they make. Besides, what's to say the next game they made might not have been something you really wanted? Studios closing is like landing on 00 on the craps table: everybody loses.

I agree with your post, Erik. There were not one, but TWO Need for Speed games that topped 6m sales on the PS2. Shocking how fast EA is falling apart at the seams.

I'm not surprised.  It was redundant for them to have Black Box and EA Canada in the same city.  They are about 20 minutes away from each other.  Don't like seeing people get laid off  but its part of the business.