EA Misses Earnings; Layoffs Ensue

Electronic Arts (EA) is the Borg of the games industry, their only goal is the complete domination of gamespace. Not that it's not a bad goal -- every corporation wants to rule the industry. Look at Bungie (makers of Halo) who have a 7 step world domination plan. What bothers me is not the Borg-like nature of EA, but rather the directions that EA is driving the industry. Call it differences in design philosophy. They call it "The EA Way". I call it stupidity.
Once upon a time, EA was an innovative company, and they put out some interesting games, and they were successful. Then EA got smart, and figured out that they had enough cash to just buy out successful game companies and make them part of EA, and then franchise the hell out of that company's properties. Their main cash cow is EA Sports -- a division of EA that churns out on an annual basis, a new version of the sport title to go with the season. As this past year has been fairly unexciting on the console front as everyone waits for the new generation of consoles to launch, EA announces that their earnings dropped 31 percent, and that their holiday sales were down 11 percent. Kotaku has two recent articles one showing an EA statement about the layoffs, and the other from a secondhand account showing the EA Way when it comes to hires.
I don't think I'll ever get used to this industry where companies get rid of good, talented people. The greatest resource of a game company is not money, but people. Too often game companies forget this.
EA, being a big name will always have people clamoring to work for them. But after having worked as a third party developer for EA, and having a behind the scenes look at their business practices and the way they treat their employees, it's shown me that I never want to work for them.
It's a tough year for games -- personally I have my own theory for why EA had a shortfall in earnings, and it has nothing to do with their products, but rather the lack of products in the one growing area of gaming: MMOG. EA has Ultima Online, an 8 year old game as their lone entry in the MMOG market, so it shouldn't come as any surprise that Vivendi Univeral Games in Q3 2005 showed an increase in revenue of a whooping 88 percent over the same period last year, while EA showed a 4.4 percent drop in the same period. VUG revenue was down 11 percent from the previous year, but VUG had two very successful launches in Q4 2004 -- World of Warcraft and Half Life 2.