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."

Re:How is this new?

[Cheapy]

My favorite Maxis game? Streets of Sim City. All the fun of building a city without the whole "appeasing the citizens", "ensuring economic prosperity", or "keeping people alive" distractions.

Plus it had cars with rocket launchers. How cool was that?

Realistic? No. Educational? Maybe for learning how to blow things up. Allowing a 10 year old me to play a game with explosions all while being able to say that it was SimCity? Oh yeah.

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.

Re:fun stat du jour

[tepples]

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...

Re:Easy.

[Anonymous Coward]

i freakin love the offensive-ness of C&C Generals... seriously, "I VEEL MAKE THE SACRAFICE" is one of the greatest audio clips... ever.

some other great ones:
"I need some shoes."
"Please, don't huuurt me!"
"Can i have some shoes?"

politically incorrect middle eastern terrorists. gatta love it.