Quite a bad way to start the holiday season:

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=25999

so EA isnt making what they want and now making massive cuts, we can thank the recession partly on this. The other part is the stupid US State governments that refuse to give tax incentives to game developers because they make some M rated games.

Game companies can make billions a year, and they pay massive taxes that help state governments, why not cut them a bit of slack and maybe they will help keep unemployment numbers down.

Can't blame EA for slashing jobs when they keep bleeding money. Now we'll see if EA can shed those jobs without sacrificing the creativity and quality needed to succeed in this industry.

I know it is wrong to smile at these kind of news, but I cant help it. I bet that all those who lost their jobs are not responsible for EA bullshit. Even so, it is great to see one of the giants that made gaming so miserable are finally getting what they deserve. SE, Ubisoft and Activision you just wait.

For those that don't know Redwood Shores is also Visceral Games http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visceral_Games

They recently bombed with Dead Space Extraction, the original Dead Space didn't live up to EAs expectations, and with the lack of followings behind Dantes Inferno I don't see that one doing amazing well either.

In short they've been a money pit for EA, so no wonder they were a little pissy when no one bought Dead Space Extraction.

-Mythic studios is sorta merged into Bioware
-Criterion will be making a Need for Speed game so Black Box studios will have to make one less NFS game
-EA Tiburon has lost the NASCAR license, they are however making an MMA game.
-Visceral Games likely won't be making another Godfather game or a Dead Space Wii game, but are still making Dante's Inferno and Dead Space 2 (likely)
-The Sims team probably won't have to worry about a Sims 4 anytime soon

Well clean up the labour force. Make some room now to maybe attract some new talent later.

Conquest didn't sell well at all, but Mercs 2 actually sold well which I'm betting was due to good marketing.  So 1 out of 2 games so far, things may hinge on the third.

Pandemic wasn't an amazing developer to begin with, I mean I LOVE Battlefront but I know how unbalanced it was as well, which a lesser known and typically seen less talented developer, Rebellion, made a much more balanced Battlefront with Renegade Squadron.  So yeah their biggest game was outdone by a smaller developer (from an actual competitive game standpoint)

I'd say if Pandemic gets some fat cut out, it might be for the best anyway.

  Thats what they get for trying to make a quality hardcore game for the Wii (that doesn't star Samus).  The Wii is just not a platform for making good games that aren't published by Nintendo.  It is a platform for 1st party games and mini game collections mixed with some WTF games (like party babiez, my poniez 2 ect).

   If they had put the money into the PS3/360/PC they'd have another 2 million seller instead of a under 100k dud.  They could have spent 1/10th the dead space budget on a game called "circus games" which involves using the balance board to stay on a rolling ball under the big top and using the wiimote to whip your tiger into shape.  Guaranteed 3 million seller.

I don't think that was what he was going for, but it's fairly petty to hate a company that's putting out some of the best games this generation in various genres.

Yes, EA were fools for thinking that the mature rail shooter could ever succeed on the Wii.

They should have made that circus game, because that stuff is always a guaranteed hit.

Oddly enough, Dead Space: Extraction has as much in common with the titles I link in the second sentence as the ones I link in the first. The games in the second sentence are all flopping because their market is saturated. The ideas are old, done several times over without anything new enough to excite the market into making another buy. Majesco and Hudson have been beaten to the punch several times over, just like Visceral was beaten to the idea of a mature rail shooter on the Wii thrice over.

Wii gamers are about as interested in Dead Space: Extraction as they are in Deca Sports 2.