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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."
The four groups will be known as EA Games, EA Sports, EA Casual Entertainment, and a label simply called 'The Sims'.
That's odd. I would have expected the fourth one to be "Madden"
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
"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.
I guess its the bureaucracy that's been holding them back from releasing madden twice a year then? I'm definitely looking forward to madden 07.5 now!
Wasn't that "pilot program" called Maxis?
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
Would that just be, um, Maxis?
...but is it art?
...but I just kinda said, "Fuck it," ya know?
Easy.
Spin your "studios" off, and back into independent units with a good degree of autonomy.
Maxis and Westwood were both fantastic on their own, and produced a whole bunch of innovative and fun games. Since being absorbed into the EA empire, they haven't produced a single new idea (not to mention that C&C Generals was outright offensive)
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Those groups don't representative EA well enough I think. They probably should be renamed as:
Other then in internal upper management command chains does this really change anything? EA has pretty much already had these separations in place with few exceptions.
EA Games: EA Redwood Shores and EA LA
EA Sports: EA Canada, EA Tiburon, EA Chicago and EA UK
EA Casual Entertainment: Pogo and EA Mobil
The Sims: Maxis
Really what is the difference between what is going no now and what has been going on for years?
I'd hate to work for that division, unless EA promised to reallocate me within another division when The Sims loses popularity. Talk about putting all your eggs in one basket... People inevitably lose interest in a game over time (even World of Warcraft perhaps).
-William Brendel
To take an existing company and split it up into smaller sections - whether spin-offs, labels, or whatever - is basically a bullshit move from the standpoint of management. If it's branding we're talking about, that's one thing. Differentiating among brands to target different markets is fine. But to actually split an organization up into separate operating units and decentralize their organizational structure is the new-age crap of the late 80s and 90s that ended up being a giant fart in the spacesuit of business.
Properly managed, a single organization can be of any size and any complexity. Good management will implement organizational decentralization as necessary, and as a corollary will also integrate management of operating units at appropriate decision-making levels to ensure optimum efficiency (management-speak would insert the bullshit word 'synergies' here).
Long story short, if EA was being managed properly in the first place, it wouldn't need to be split apart. The fact that its operating units can't be creative unless they pretend they're separate companies is a sign that the management has no idea what it's doing.
A-Bomb
This is really a split based on the needed qualifications of the divisional executives:
You're probably right. I picked up "The Sims 2" a while ago. Given its popularity, I assumed it must be a pretty good game. To be honest, I can't figure out how to play it. I don't even know what the object is. I'll probably try again, at some point, but not before I check out a few strategy guides.
I wonder if the "Sim City" stuff will be in the same group.
Actually, no. Some digital sandboxes still have goals that players regard as the main mission:- SimCity Classic: put 500,000 people into one town and beat all scenarios. (The manual for the Super NES version admitted that this was the mission.)
- Harvest Moon: get a positive evaluation of your farm.
- Animal Crossing: pay off your house and all expansions (1.4 million bells on GCN, 3.5 million bells on DS) and get a perfect town (about 13 trees per acre).
The Sims, on the other hand...EA Pestilence, EA War, EA Famine, and EA Death
TFA fails to mention that the reason for this is that the EA Bugs division was disbanded because they found out that instead of spending time carefully putting CTDs inn and unbalancing gameplay, they could simplify the whole process of bug development by just corrupting the EXE file so every time on startup it gives out a BSOD.
I'm actually hoping that they make "The Sims" division stand for all Sim games, not just the one they've milked to death. That would open up a lot of possibilities. SimFarm,while a horrible game overall, was a lot of fun at times; a decent update could work well. SimCity, SimEarth, SimAnt, etc. could all do well if they would focus resources on them and give them a chance. Then open up new ones, like SimMachine, and I could see things going really, really well for that division.