EA lays off 1.500

Quote from Thrik

Er, what? Okay, but what I just said about Maxis not necessarily being worth keeping at its full-strength size still stands. When you're suffering massive financial losses — largely caused by supporting original IP and gamers not fucking buying the games, I might add — you're obviously going to downsize parts of the company not performing, no matter how loved they are.EA gave Maxis all the goodwill in the world with Spore, and it ended up being a bit shit. Creators of The Sims or not (bearing in mind that part of Maxis is now a separate studio), they're subject to the same rules that govern all businesses in the world — if they don't supply products that people demand, they lose their opportunity to do so.

I mostly blame gamers nowadays. Every time publishers have lent massive support to original IP, they end up underselling and/or being total flops. There's a cemetery of amazing games that didn't sell well, and the 'publisher didn't market it properly' excuse only goes so far.

There's a difference between downsizing Maxis and closing them down, and I was responding to rumors that put Maxis in the same category as Pandemic, which was just shuttered. I don't care what justification a company might have financially for it, I still don't have to like it.

Also "Every time publishers have lent massive support to original IP, they end up underselling and/or being total flops." isn't true. Dead Space 1, and Bioshock for recent games, new IPs that did great. Mirror's Edge and Assassin's Creed sold well enough to get sequels. You can't blame the consumers for not buying a game they don't want. It's the people making the game who are responsible for making what there's a market for, not the market's responsibility to buy up whatever's offered.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.ph ... tcount=309

Yeah absolutely nothing of what this former employer says is even remotely surprising to me. I haven't worked at Pandemic, but I know a few stories that definitely would send signals to anyone that this would eventually happen. As far as Saboteur, yes EA is definitely sending it to die. The hype is close to none, and the marketing even less.

pandemics twitter page says its still going to be released though

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he made a cool 5 mil off of the sale of Pandemic

man wtf, almost word for word what i wrote

also, god damn i hate neogaf - what a shithole filled with faggots

Quote from Furyo

As far as Saboteur, yes EA is definitely sending it to die. The hype is close to none, and the marketing even less.

Yeah, even if it looks like the best game in the world I'd be really hesitant to buy a game that has nobody around to patch/support it.

I liked Mercenaries 1, except it kept crashing on my PS2 and had super long load times when I started missions. Besides that though, it was a really nice sandbox blow stuff up game.