EA Confirms closing of its Chicago office

Coming just a small amount of time after its downsizing of Mythic, EA announced officially that they are closing their Chicago branch.

Here's an excerpt from the internal memo from Frank Gibeau, President of EA Games:

"Within the EA Games Label, we are committed to running each franchise and facility as a city/state, teams with unique creative identities as well as responsibility for product quality, ship dates and profitability....Unfortunately, EA Chicago hasn't been able to meet that standard....Closing EA Chicago is the toughest decision I've made in my career - one that in no way reflects on the talent and dedication of the people who work there."

I may be reading this incorrectly, but his first statement that EA Chicago has failed to meet their standards of product quality, ship dates and profitability seems to contradict his second sentence that it's not the doing of those that work there. Sounds to me as though they developers there weren't churning enough money for the beast and in turn it was shut down.

While sad this is a fairly common occurrence within the games industry. Each studio must earn enough to stay in business. When owned by a larger corporation they must earn enough to personally stay afloat while also feeding the giant looming above. It's a tough thing to do, which is seen in the amount of start-up studios that flounder fairly quickly. I guess Def Jam isn't the cash cow EA was hoping. Who would have thought?

\\drew