I dont hate Nintendo, I hate EA.

Clever, except EA puts out (if we're going by reviews and personal opinion) the best hockey series, the best skateboarding series, the best rhythm series, and a variety of other great games. And you think EA has made gaming miserable? How? They're still one of the biggest publishers and developers around, they have been for many years, and I'm still having fun.

Bitch about Activision all you want, but EA's putting forth a lot more effort this generation.

That's a shame but to be expected I don't think EA has made a yearly profit in ten years. The only surprise is they've held out so long.

thats just sad. very sad day in gaming history. when EA is having a huge improvement in games they bleed money :(, they are a big company but they are starting to produce qaulity games and they bleed money for that.

EA maker of great games such as Mirror's Edge, Battlefield (Bad Company), Dead Space, Dante's Inferno, Mass Effect and Dragon Age.

And publisher of among others: Brütal Legend, Crysis and Left4Dead

More people should have bought Dead Space Extraction.

It's quite simplistic to think that Dead Space Extraction has a role on this meltdown. If you remember well Dead Space (the original game) had an animated movie (wich was a waste of money) and a comic book (more money wasted) their original idea was to make Dead Space as big as Resident Evil (and we know Dead Space is not even 1/10 of what Resident Evil is in popularity).

I read some posts on twiter about other studios, Mythic for example they've a layoff of 80 employess, that 40% their size. EA was running on big tems and by todays standards those huge teams are a dying species, I guess EA'll try to make small focused teams of 30-60 peoples at maximum.

Yeah, attributing cut backs to one game is stupid, the team as well as EA really pushed for Dead Space as a series to take off, it didn't.  Dead Space 2 is likely still but its not going to be the next big thing in horror.  If a team isn't delivering on what you expect you give them incentive on making things to appeal to more people :P if thats laying off some of their staff and cutting the fat then so be it.

It is pretty funny that you must chose as example the games that sell the worst. NHL is not doing very well, so those reviews and personal opinion are pretty worthless (unless that can be converted into profit for EA). Skate sells ok (not sure if it is profitable) but it is nowhere near Tony Hawk on the Psx-N64 era (which I assume was cheaper to make). Rockband must make the losses smaller. But dont kid yourself, it is not even near GH in terms of appeal. As for opinion I think Ouendan is the best. I cant argue with tastes, you say those games are the best in the series, I think every sport game suck.

I am not going to write a detailed report why EA sucks, I already did on other threads. So I will make a mini version:

1) Buying smaller companies for their IPs, demanding they release sequels ignoring quality issues. When it bombs, EA layoff the new guys and end the franchise.

2) Overworking their own staff with deadlines that are impossible to met. When the subpar quality game is shipped EA blame the developers.

3) Ruining several franchises with shitty games. Like 007, Harry Potter, MoH, Need for Speed.

4) Showing the middle finger to Sega when they needed EA the most (DC era). EA would never be a giant without Sega.

5) DRM and rootkit

There is more, much more. Just google for it.

Activision are assholes, no one sane would deny it. Even so I would giive them more 5 years for them to be even near EA's level.

For all those affected by the EA layoffs - Fire Hose is hiring and we'd love to have you as part of our team! Check out www.firehosegames.com/jobs for more information!