EA Sports and EA Games Splitting Apart in Internal Shakeup

Electronic Arts is undergoing a major internal shakeup, announcing today in a message from CEO Andrew Wilson that it is realigning its major studios and its leadership structure in an effort to "empower our creative teams." From a report: The reorganization includes splitting EA Games and EA Sports, with the former being renamed "EA Entertainment" in a signal that EA intends to expand beyond games where possible. "We're building the future of interactive entertainment on a foundation of legendary franchises and innovative new experiences, which represents massive opportunities for growth," Wilson wrote in a message announcing the news.

This is getting out of hand.

[Chris Mattern]

Now there are *two* of them!

Rise of the Sith

[e3m4n]

Always two there are; a Master and an Apprentice.

So it's no longer "it's in the game" now?

[xack]

I guess "it's in the entertainment" doesn't make as much sense, if you can call microtransactions entertainment?

Re:

[byronivs]

It's in the MASSive opporTUNities. {in throwdown voice}

4 Years into the Future...

[TechyImmigrant]

EA announces the merging of EA Sports and EA Games into a single more flexible, dynamic team.

Re:

[Creepy]

It's just an internal reorg, looks like, and my guess is they will continue to make Frostbite Labs develop the base engine and then a sports focused version of Frostbite for the Sports division and probably several game focused versions for the rest based on type of game.

I have gotten to play with Frostbite (probably 1, they're on 3 now) and I would hate to adapt that to anything but a shooter. It is what it was developed for, and very hard to tack on other forms of gameplay. My old boss owned a studio that

Re:

[Pascoea]

Close, but it'll be more like "EA announces the merging of EA Sports and EA Games into a single more flexible, dynamic team, allowing us to reduce overhead and streamline our processes." Which is just MBA speak for "we can lay off 2000 people."

Re:

[Briareos]

"Sports Games", to finally get rid of "EA"?

empower our creative teams

[B0mb1tll]

Yeah, to "empower our creative teams".
Nothing is as empowering as restructuring a company causing a whole bunch of uncertainty for the people doing the create work of actually producing the product.

Re:

[dmay34]

Eh, I imagine those entities basically function completely separately anyway. The Sports games really haven't changed all that much since the 90's, and they are just cash cows that bring in a steady income every year, while the Games side actually has to invest in new stories, puzzles, etc.

Re:

[B0mb1tll]

You could be right. I can imagine there is overlap in tooling and infrastructure for the two teams though.

Re:

[tlhIngan]

Eh, I imagine those entities basically function completely separately anyway. The Sports games really haven't changed all that much since the 90's, and they are just cash cows that bring in a steady income every year, while the Games side actually has to invest in new stories, puzzles, etc.

That would make sense - the sports engines haven't really needed much development - probably minor improvements but I can't see anything major being developed. That's why there's new versions every year.

About the biggest

Re:

[thegarbz]

No this is a good thing. EA Sports is well known for the most soulless uncreative copy-paste-change-the-title-and-slap-$70-on-the-box garbage in the entire industry. If I were part of EA and I heard I wouldn't need to be associated with EA Sports anymore I would dancing in the street right now. EA Sports represents the worst of the gaming industry. The rest of EA is pretty bad, but still pales in comparison.

union busting move?

[Joe_Dragon]

union busting move? by cutting the work force into smaller units to make it harder on them to union up?

Re:

[rsilvergun]

Could be. Many years ago the owner class got a concession that we would unionize by physical location instead of by profession. That worked when you had a massive factories but when those got automated or moved overseas and the nature of work changed it left us pretty screwed. All the legal protections are designed around individual sites. That's why you keep seeing individuals Starbucks unionizing even though it's ridiculous to have one store in a city being a union store.

Tingle-eeng! Dinergy achieved!

[byronivs]

Please deposit 30% more souls to continue. 5...4...3...2...1. (demonvoiced) Added Value.

Cool, but

[DarkRookie2]

This is all neat, but I doubt this will improve the quality of the sports games enough to want to pick one up.
I wanted Madden 22 because when is there ever going to be another Buc on the cover. But all the reviews were trash, and half the space was taken up but a lower quality QB that didn't deserve to be there.

Movie make by EA

[TheReaperD]

Husband: "Honey, I think EA made this movie?"

Wife: "Why?

Husband: "Look, I got a text on my phone to authorize a payment for an 'Exclusive AMC Theater special scene for $5.99.' It says that unless everyone in the theater pays, it won't play the scene."

Wife: "What happens if we pay and someone else doesn't?"

Husband: "Let me look..."

*10 minutes of looking through the ToS later...*

Husband: "No refunds!"

Billions and billions

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

This lets them rename or partially repurpose the video games unit without pissing off the big sports leagues with whom they have multi billion dollar deals.

EA loot boxes

[Anonymous Cward]

Could this have anything to do with the fact that FIFA and other EA sports games are dependent upon what will soon be mostly-banned loot boxes to be profitable? After all, licensing all of those likenesses, player names, teams, sponsor likenesses etc. is not cheap and many technically games have to fictionalise their... purely coincidental likenesses⦠presumably to remain profitable enough.

Re:

[Creepy]

The likenesses stuff is trivial, EA sports reaps more money than Games does even before the reorg, and that is after paying for likenesses and such. I very briefly worked on FIFA, and that game alone is taking in billions now (it was millions when I worked there, circa FIFA 4). They did stuff fine before loot boxes, don't see why they won't succeed without. I mean, you pull away one revenue stream, but oh, so sad, investors earn $200 a share instead of $202. Better go sell now (and speaking of f**king loot