EA Reorganizes Into Four Labels

Reuters is reporting that the mega-publisher EA will soon be reorganized into four separate labels underneath the company's umbrella. The four groups will be known as EA Games, EA Sports, EA Casual Entertainment, and a label simply called 'The Sims'. All four organizations will be supported by two additional EA groups, which will handle publishing and 'development services'. "The changes, based on the success of a pilot program that placed games based on "The Sims" franchise into their own unit, mean it will require fewer executives to sign off on new games or to approve launching an existing game on a different platform or in a different regions. "We ran an organizational experiment and it was pretty damn successful. The Sims grew aggressively," Frank Gibeau, head of the new EA Games unit said."

Comments

Splitup by exec qualifications

[Animats]

This is really a split based on the needed qualifications of the divisional executives:

• "Games" division - needs an actual game producer in charge. Most R&D in this unit.
• "Sports" division - needs a jock, who hires other jocks, to make games jocks like. Ongoing updates and upgrades, but not much innovation needed. Technology comes from games division and outside suppliers.
• "Casual" division - needs a sales type good at sucking up to cell phone companies. For mobile games, the market is the cell phone company, not the end user.
• "Sims" division - whoever was running that project at Maxis.