Perhaps due to the cancellation of NBA Elite 11, Electronic Arts is changing how its sports titles get made.
EA Sports is a big label. It’s nominally run by Exec Peter Moore, and it encompasses three different studios that are working on any number of sports titles at a time. As of today, EA is eliminating the studio general manager role, and instead will be appointing heads of each of the sports series to report directly to Andrew Wilson in EA’s central office. Unfortunately, that means that Moira Dang, the general manager of EA Canada is out on the street. Philip Holt, GM of EA Tiburon, is reportedly still with EA but is “considering other options within the company.” EA Canada is where FIFA, NHL and formerly NBA Elite are developed, while Tiburon is the home of Madden and the NCAA Football games.
“We’re making organizational changes to our development team at EA Sports that will be better for the franchises and better for our people,” a representative from EA said. “We continue to proactively evolve our team to better position ourselves with improved product quality and growth in revenue for our shareholders, to share technology and lower our development costs, and to pioneer new innovation in digital experiences for our consumers.
“As part of this transition, we have eliminated the site-based GM roles at EA Canada and Tiburon.”
It is clear that this is fallout from the cancellation of NBA Elite 11 last week. To have such a big name brand completely dropped can only mean that upper management had no idea that the game was the mess that it was. It’s a huge loss for EA not to have a major NBA-themed game this season, and the shakeups and reorganizations are likely designed to prevent something like this from happening again.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go play NBA 2K11.
Source: 1up
