14 DAY TRIAL // It seems like the decision made by Electronic Arts to fire 1,500 people has even greater ramifications than just unemployment. Most of the remaining studios can't help but feel insecure after the massive layout, and, with a constant blade being pressed against their throats, they have to make some cutting of their own. Every software that isn't seen as a sure profit is slowly becoming less and less a priority and more and more a disposable concept.
The first studio to rethink its approach on future game development is EA Montreal. The company responsible for Army of Two has announced that it will start focusing more on block-buster titles for the PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 and that the development for the Wii will see a great decrease in interest. "The Wii market is a little bit unpredictable these days," EA Montreal's GM, Alain Tascan, said, when talking to Edge.
"We're going to see how Christmas is going to do and while with the Wii we have had very successful titles, we are going to focus on big, blockbuster-type titles. It doesn't mean that we are going to abandon the Wii, but as a studio we want to be ready for new challenges." Just a few weeks ago, EA boss John Riccitiello pointed out that third-party Wii software was doing very poorly in sales, so we can only see EA Montreal's statement as a direct result of EA's general attitude towards supporting Nintendo's console.
In the past, EA Montreal released several Wii titles that, even if they did not make such an impact on the market as Army of Two, proved to be quality products. The Wii games of EA Montreal encompass a very large part of EA's total output of Wii software, so, with it shifting priorities, the company won't be releasing all that many titles for the platform any time soon. Skate It, Boogie, Need for Speed Nitro and Spore Hero are the titles that the developer released for the Wii, and not one of them was a bad game.