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EA to cut jobs at Maxis and Pandemic

The recent announcement of job cuts at EA was accompanied by little more information on where the cuts would be made, as EA operates a lot of studios worldwide. Now a rumor suggests that the cuts will target studios Maxis and Pandemic, who worked on Mercenaries and The Saboteur.

The rumor also suggests, quite stunningly, that the entire team behind Command & Conquer 4 will get sacked after the game is complete. How’s that for “motivation”?

EA CEO frustrated by weak Wii game sales

During a recent conference all, EA CEO John Riccitiello expressed his frustration with games on the Wii selling not as well as they have, and not selling as well and they used to. He said,

“To be honest with you, I think the Wii platform has been a little weaker than we had certainly anticipated. And there is no lack of frustration to be doing that at precisely the time where we have the strongest third-party share.”

Riccitiello also added that Nintendo should support 3rd party developers more, and that EA has reached out to Nintendo to partner up and push third party titles even stronger.

EA posts losses, cutting 1,500 jobs

While Activision is gearing up to have the largest entertainment launch of all time, EA isn’t exactly basking in the same success. In fact, they have announced today that they will be eliminated 1,500 employees in an attempt to cut costs and turn a profit.

EA says that eliminating these employees and shutting down several facilitates will give them an opportunity to “focus on titles with higher margin opportunities”.

Exactly what these titles are remains unknown.

via kotaku

Brutal Legend getting Tears of the Hextadon DLC pack

EA’s Brutal Legend just made it onto store shelves earlier this month and already the game’s developers have come forth to announce the DLC pack Tears of the Hextadon.

This pack will feature 2 additional maps entitled Circle of Tears and Death’s Fjord for playings to utilize with Stage Battle. Circle of Tears will feature a “rough-hewn” circular design while Death’s Fjord will feature an icy mountain landscape.

EA says Tears of the Hextadon will be hitting Xbox Live on November 3rd for 400 Microsoft Points and the Playstation Network on November 5th.

via destructoid

Dead Space: Extraction met with lackluster results

Dead Space: Extraction made its way onto store shelves for the Nintendo Wii on September 29th and considering the reviews and media, we figured it would be met with some critical acclaim. Well, the numbers are in and to Visceral Games’ dismay, it was not met with the critical acclaim they had hoped for.

In fact, in its first week on store shelves (Sep. 29th – Oct. 3rd) the game only managed to push 9,000 copies. EEDAR analyst Jesse Divinch comments on the game’s less than stellar launch:

“Electronic Arts didn’t market Dead Space Extraction as much as it does with other titles. And the success or failure of a Wii title usually correlates directly to marketing spend. If Electronic Arts spent little on marketing, I am sure the sell through was no surprise to them. So I do not believe sell through was a disappointment to EA.”

Let’s wait until Visercal comments to see if what this analyst says is true.

via edge-online

Need for Speed Nitro pushed ahead, coming early next month

Back in July we let you know that Need for Speed Nitro would be hitting store shelves for the Wii and Nintendo DS on November 16th. Today, EA has announced that the game’s development has gone smoother than expected and the game now has a release date of November 3rd.

If you’re a fan of the Need for Speed series and are looking for a hardcore racer, this most likely isn’t the game for you. However, if you’re a casual player looking for a fun racing game to play then you should definitely check out Need for Speed Nitro. I mean, it is for the Nintendo DS and Wii, after all.

via joystiq

Dragon Age Journeys: The Deep Roads coming to a browser near you

It seems that BioWare and a browser-based development offset of EA called EA 2D have teamed up to produce Dragon Age Journeys: The Deep Roads. This game is a browser-based tactical RPG set in the same universe as Dragon Age: Origins.

There haven’t been many details regarding the game other than that it will be a 3-chapter title with talent trees, classes, sound effects, music and user interfaces taken straight from its console counterpart.

via bioware

Will Wright’s latest studio working on 3 unannounced projects

In early April we let you know that Will Wright, the guy behind The Sims, Spore and co-founder of Maxis, would be departing the studio he helped build to focus on his newest studio Stupid Fun Club. At the time we had no idea exactly what the studio would work on first and not much has changed since. Although today we now at least know that Stupid Fun Club is working on something.

Mr. Wright himself recently sat down with VentureBeat to let us know that Stupid Fun Club is working on three separate projects which could come to life in “six months to a year”. He elaborated by saying that these projects range from the internet to toys but didn’t say much further.

So, within the next 6-12 months we should be seeing more of Stupid Fun Club.

Heroes of the Fall content pack for Battlefield Heroes makes its debut

Battlefield Heroes is a completely free to play game so it was generally assumed that EA wouldn’t be putting much effort into release additional content for it. However, considering the game’s success EA has gone ahead and released the Heroes of the Fall content pack for the game.

The change list, included after the break, is quite long with some notable features being the all new Riverside Rush map, new items and a whole slew of bug fixes.

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Need for Speed: Shift demo coming to XBL and PSN Oct. 1st

EA has just announced that the demo for the recently released Need for Speed: Shift is set to drop for the Xbox 360 and Playstation this Thursday, October 1st.

Included in the demo is the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps racetrack along with one set in the middle of London for you to try out the below 6 cars:

• 2006 Lotus Elise 111R
• 2006 Pagani Zonda
• 2008 Dodge Viper SRT10
• 2008 Nissan GT-R
• BMW M3 (E46)

The game is already out so once you play the demo and fall in love, head over to your local retailer to snag a copy.

via gamesareevil

Chris Hecker beings work on SpyParty

It’s no secret that EA/Maxis’ Spore was a hit with some of the game’s success being attributed to Maxi developer Chris Hecker.

Unfortunately, Maxis recently let Hecker in an effort to downsize the company but that hasn’t stopped him from quickly moving onto a new project which he calls SpyParty. In this game, there will be 2 players, the Spy and the Sniper. The Spy’s job is to move around the party undetected while completely various objectives while the Sniper’s job is to find the Spy and take him out.

Unfortunately, there is no word on when this game will his store shelves, if ever, but we are definitely anticipating any further information regarding SpyParty.

via bigdownload

Brutal Legend probably won’t get delayed

If you’ve been following Brutal Legend, you’ll know that Activision is none too happy about EA gaining the rights to publish the game. In fact, they even went as far as asking a court to legally delay Brutal Legend after sueing the game’s developers.

Well, the final decision isn’t in yet but it looks like it’s going to be ruled in EA favors as the judge has expressed his disinterest in complying with Activision’s requests.

So, as of now, you can still expect to see Brutal Legend hit store shelves for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 on October 13th of this year.

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Ubisoft to go head-to-head with piracy this year

Piracy has been an issue for a long time. Even before Napster was made mainstream people were recording songs off the radio and selling bootleg copies. Well, the game industry is no different and one company in particular has been hurtin’ especially bad; Ubisoft.

It seems that the publisher is so fed up with piracy that they have plans to combat the issue with their own firepower. Yves Guillemot, head of Ubisoft, speaks of the piracy problem:

“Altogether on console, the piracy is low. On the PC the piracy is quite a lot. We are working on a tool that would allow us to decrease that on the PC starting next year and probably one game this year.”

So what do they have cookin’ over at Ubisoft? Let’s hope they aren’t getting ideas from EA as we saw how well that was recieved with Spore.

EA releases Command & Conquer 4 debut trailer

The wait between Command & Conquer: Generals and its successor, Command & Conquer 3, was about 5 years. EA seems to be avoiding a repeat as they have just released the debut trailer for Command & Conquer 4.

RTS fans, don’t expect any actual gameplay footage as the trailer features exclusivly what looks to be just cinematics. However, if you’re following the plot of the franchise you’ll be intrigued to hear that Nod head-honcho Kane makes an appearance in said trailer.

EA has no set release date for Command & Conquer 4 but they hope to have it hit the market sometime in 2010. Will the game have what it takes to oust Blizzard’s forthcoming Starcraft II? We’ll have to wait and find out.

The Sims 3 sells 820,000 US copies in 1 month

Ever since the first Sims title hit the market it’s been generally accepted that every game then after would be a huge success and The Sims 3 is no different.’

According to recent reports, in the US The Sims 3 sold a full 820,000 copies in June alone. Added to that, Gamasutra strongly believes the game has sold over 2.5million copies globally.

Just to put that into perspective, the entire Sims franchise had sold over 100 million copies worldwide as of April 16th, 2008.

I think it’s safe to say that The Sims is definitely here to stay.