14 DAY TRIAL // The gaming industry is going through some very tough times these days, as more and more big companies are announcing drastic layoffs and severe cost-cutting measures in order to cope with the decrease of profit in the last fiscal year. The recession is now in full swing and big corporations, like Sony, Microsoft or Electronic Arts are shutting down studios and reducing development teams for most of their projects.
Electronic Arts has been affected quite severely by the tough economic climate and has recently resorted to quite a lot of layoffs in many of its divisions, EA Mobile included. Now, after some very ugly rumors about the fate of the EA Black Box studio, responsible for the very popular Need For Speed franchise, it seems that, following a recent batch of layoffs made at the EA Canada branch of the company, the fate of the future PSP versions of Need For Speed has been sealed and the company won't release other iterations of the series onto that platform.
Sources close to the Canadian branch of the gaming company have told Kotaku that nearly 55 employees have been forced to look for another job and that the future of the PSP version of the racing game isn't very bright. This is backed up by the fact that some EA representatives have stated that the company plans to stop making games on platforms that can't generate a profit.
Contacted by the gaming website in order to comment on these rumors, EA reinstated that cost-cutting measures were being made and that they would affect a lot of branches of the company: “As announced in February, all EA divisions and facilities worldwide are subject to a cost cutting initiative that will impact roughly 10 percent of the employee population. Those cuts will take place between December and the end of our fiscal year in March.”
The latest iteration in the racing series, Need For Speed Undercover, hasn't really lived up to the expectations of the company, as fans didn't seem very interested in the long-running franchise anymore, after a very unconvincing ProStreet title released in 2007.