Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
Opiate said:The obvious problem with this is that today's success is tomorrow's fat. Example? Maxis is on the chopping block. Certainly not being killed entirely, but from what we hear, they'll be taking a bulk of cuts. Maxis. The creators of The Sims, EA's biggest hit in their history. Or you have Westwood studios, who used to produce big money makers with the early C&C games, which have gradually lessened over time. Pandemic was a moneymaker at one point, too.
So unless your company is a revolving door, constantly firing the old (once succesful, now fatty) and hiring the new, there's no way for this to be done in predictable fashion. I don't think the video game industry is set up in a manner that makes this feasible.
Oh absolutely. Which is why EA went from enormously profitable to enormously unprofitable overnight. Acquisitions + new teams in existing studios + team size swell as time goes on + a few faltering old teams = Massive revenue swing.
Maxis is already essentially dead, BTW. Most of the non-design staff got merged in or laid off when Maxis merged into Redwood Shores. I'm not sure what the Kotaku rumour is talking about; maybe they mean cuts at Redwood Shores or cuts of the Maxis design people, no idea.
From the earnings reports we're seeing, it seems abundantly clear that EA would only be seeing favorable profit and growth if literally no inefficiencies existed.
Well, beyond releasing successful games on time and on budget and cutting dead weight, what can a company do? It's not like they're going to say "Welp, jig's up guys. Time to reboot our company and scrap all our IP!"--Majesco, by the way, is the last example of a neutron star publisher. Or Sega before them. Those scenarios aren't going to happen to EA.
Provided those rumours and this one are true, I think it'll be a totally necessary move for EA and return them to the realm of sane business practices. Bummer about the job losses.
Kifimbo said:Montreal looks safe. EA will take advantage of the subsidies.
Well those kinds of externalities are always worth considering.
Then my instinct would say that EA should aggressively slice off the personnel that aren't working on Army of Two, focus on getting the quality team another IP to play with, and find a niche for the studio.
Their record is very poor.