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Electronic Arts Cuts 5% Of Worldwide Staff
by Simon Carless
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February 1, 2006
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According to online reports confirmed by an official statement made to consumer site GameSpot, Electronic Arts has laid off around 5 percent of its staff worldwide, estimated by independent sources at more than 300 employees in total, following a cautionary conference call in mid-December regarding the slowing video game market.
Although the EA spokesperson did not specifically reference affected studios, it's believed that the EA Redwood Shores, EA Tiburon, and EA Vancouver studios were all affected notably by the layoffs, which come in a generational hardware transition period for the company and the industry.
The Electronic Arts spokeperson commented to GameSpot that "during transition we always look to realign our resourses, whether that's people, technology, or our investments", something that has clearly happened in this case. The layoffs immediately precede an EA earnings call scheduled for Thursday afternoon, in which further discussion of the changes is likely to be raised by EA executives.
EA's previous December financial call indicated that sales of the company's games had been below expectations for November, and even further below expectations for December, commenting, with EA CFO Warren Jenson commenting at the time: "While we expect several positives, we have no reason to believe that this abrupt change in demand for current generation software will reverse itself."
EA representatives had not returned calls made by Gamasutra asking for additional information by press time.
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