Layoffs at EA Canada; Tiburon new NBA developer

[benji]

History looks to be repeating itself at Electronic Arts. Sources tell 1UP that Tiburon will now be handling the NBA franchise.

The report follows a tweet from 3D Realm's George Broussard, who says that EA Canada has laid off more than 100 employees. Broussard also said that he has heard rumors of "large scale layoffs" at EA coming soon.

EA Canada was responsible for the development of NBA Elite 11, which has been delayed indefinitely. The studio also handles the NHL series. Need for Speed developer Black Box and EA Canada were consolidated in 2008.

If the reports are accurate, this would mark the second time in EA history that an important sports franchise has been transferred to Tiburon following a failure to launch. The first instance came when Visual Concepts failed to complete a PlayStation version of Madden NFL 96. The project was handed to Tiburon, which has been responsible for the series ever since.

http://www.1up.com/news/report-nba-elite-moved-tiburon

A source tells Shacknews that EA Canada and EA Black Box--both located in Vancouver, Canada--have been affected by EA's recently confirmed "seasonal roll-offs."

The source claims that "as many as 100 employees" were let go earlier today. According to our source, the teams hit by the layoffs include those behind the "indefinitely delayed" NBA Elite 11 and the critically acclaimed but sluggish seller Skate 3, with some employees from the EA Sports Active team "possibly" being hit as well.

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/66215

[JaoSming]

wow, but not too surprising considering how much of a public disappointment Elite 11's demo was,


can't say I'm pleased that Tiburon got the game though....I haven't been a fan of Madden since 2003. I'm confident that they will get the game playable...but if the NBA Live team couldn't make a "great" NBA game, and the NHL team failed miserably, it looks like the NFL studio is the last straw for NBA basketball games.


I wonder what happens to the "3 year plan" now too...my guess is Tiburon will just go back to NBA Live 10, scrapping Elite completely and make their own game.

[atlwarrior]

Either this is a good thing or bad thing. We now have football guys making a basketball game. Wierd right? I hope they dont put a truck stick on the game.

[ThaLiveKing]

I think its about time they got out of EA CAnada!!! Can't say I'm suprised

[atlwarrior]

So what will happen with the roster updates on nba live 10?

[benji]

There's still people employed at EA Canada. Almost 2,000. Besides you only really need two people to do the roster updates. One guy to read out of the newspaper and the other guy to type it in.

[JaoSming]

So what will happen with the roster updates on nba live 10?

absolutely nothing different

all NBA Live 10 got that Live 09 didn't get last year was a manual update a week before the season started. the rest is how benji put it, 1 person making sure people are injured and another doing accessories or whatever. doesnt take much since it is mostly automatic.

[playbook]

OK is EA for REAL? your gonna get a NFL developers that only know a lot of knowledge of football, doing a NBA game that have no knowledge whatsoever. Is EA smoking in the morning or bump their head really hard on something. That is retarted get "BASKETBALL DEVELOPERS" to work on the game what is this 2 or 3 yrs in a row they're getting a different sports game working on a ball game. My god, I'm done with EA for real man this is too crazy. And Benji sorry for the caps on some of them.

[atlwarrior]

OK is EA for REAL? your gonna get a NFL developers that only know a lot of knowledge of football, doing a NBA game that have no knowledge whatsoever. Is EA smoking in the morning or bump their head really hard on something. That is retarted get "BASKETBALL DEVELOPERS" to work on the game what is this 2 or 3 yrs in a row they're getting a different sports game working on a ball game. My god, I'm done with EA for real man this is too crazy. And Benji sorry for the caps on some of them.

Well it isnt like it was any better with EA Canada developers.

[benji]

To be fair, they make and have made a lot more than just Madden: http://www.mobygames.com/browse/games/e ... eloped-by/

[Patr1ck]

This tells me that the big problem with EA's bball franchise comes from the top. As they just rebooted, once again. It's the ignorance in the decision makers that want a fresh and new experience every year, only to realize that it takes more than one year to make a sports game with any kind of depth in it.

I don't think they can scrap NBA Elite. There might be something with licensing the name, but I might just be making it up.

[bronco_4_ever]

only if EA knew how to make bball like how they make football games

[benji]

Bid higher on an exclusive license and have a debatable progress/decline from there excluded from market forces?

[Andrew]

If they assemble a team that knows basketball, listen to community feedback so they're aware of what we want, don't try to do too much in one year and quite trying to reboot the series every year, then I don't think Tiburon's history of making football games will make them ill-equipped to develop NBA titles.

For that matter, I don't think NBA Elite 11's problem was with bringing in some people from the NHL team as much as it was trying to do too much within one production cycle, the reboot forcing them to scrap things that could and should have been built upon.

[benji]

It is fair to think that EA could mandate Tiburon perform their own ten-month cycle to "reboot" the series again since that's how the division almost completely works. I wouldn't even rule out a name change yet again.

I doubt EA is willing to take two years off when they see the 2K11 sales numbers, and they had no faith or plan for what EA Canada was supposed to be doing with it. If they had said "okay, the buzz was bad, we're going to give it a longer cycle and come back next year bigger and better." That's one thing. But instead they said, we're dumping Elite and kicking the team off of it and giving it to our other yearly cycle box. (One rumor is that EA is going to be taking EA Canada away from that model, thus why they're kicking out the last vestiges of that model, FIFA is possibly EA's biggest game and NHL just makes sense in Canada so they're exempt. EA has been in a state of reorganization and divestment for the last few years and been using "market realities" to let it do things it intended to do anyway, such as killing the Pandemic part of the Elevation deal, the aforementioned Black Box dumping for Criterion and now moving the NBA franchise out of Canada.)

Whether or not Tiburon goes back to Live 10 or tries to rehabilitate Elite remains to be seen assuming they don't start from scratch. (Why change developers and saddle them with the past is one thinking, but then Madden's always been exempt from this, and it's why VC is now dominating the NBA license.) But I'm not sure you can put any faith in any kind of proper "revolution" until Live/Elite 13 at this point. And if Madden is any indication, I'm sure the jump from one gen to the next will be just as smooth for Tiburon as it was for EA Canada.

In the long run, EA probably will regret not just biting the bullet and clinging to the market share it had. Especially after manufacturing all those copies.

[JaoSming]

In the long run, EA probably will regret not just biting the bullet and clinging to the market share it had. Especially after manufacturing all those copies.

That's exactly how I'm seeing it. Elite was bad, but people would have bought it and stopped playing it in a month which most "normal" gamers do anyway. Some extra people would have been drawn to EASBA and even with all the shitty animations and hook shot cheese people still would have played it.

If people played Live 07 all year when 2k7 was on the shelf next to it, people would have played Elite 11 when 2k11 was sitting next to it. And that is not even mentioning all the people who bought it for NBA Jam.

[benji]

Jam is almost the entire reason I say it, especially after printing the copies AND ALL THE JAM CODES. Plus all the ads!

I do wonder if they were afraid of scarring the Elite brand out of the gate though. They may have figured they had the time for a mulligan. I wish someone would talk about it.

[JaoSming]

http://twitter.com/#!/ryansantos/status/28959604025

Change is here. Big things to come. ~Dev Ryan Santos

[Patr1ck]

I think they should just do a closed play test of elite as it is now and see if they should just release it or not based on the feedback. If this news is confirmed, and by Ryan Santos' tweet, it pretty much is, then Elite 11 is going to be cancelled.

[ThaLiveKing]

yeah, they should just scrap the game and work hard on the new game!!!

[Patr1ck]

I bet a survey on what they should do is looming.

[Houndy]

EA is in panic mode, 'nuff said.

[ThaLiveKing]

In the long run, EA probably will regret not just biting the bullet and clinging to the market share it had. Especially after manufacturing all those copies.

That's exactly how I'm seeing it. Elite was bad, but people would have bought it and stopped playing it in a month which most "normal" gamers do anyway. Some extra people would have been drawn to EASBA and even with all the shitty animations and hook shot cheese people still would have played it.

If people played Live 07 all year when 2k7 was on the shelf next to it, people would have played Elite 11 when 2k11 was sitting next to it. And that is not even mentioning all the people who bought it for NBA Jam.[/quote]

LOL, THat last statement is so true!!

[benji]

Well, Tiburon gets to follow in the footsteps of their old EA Canada friends:

Phil Frazier, the longstanding executive producer for the Madden series, has parted ways with Electronic Arts.

EA Sports says the experienced product manager “was looking for a new opportunity” in retiring from the group after fourteen years.

“Our team is changing to tackle new opportunities and we're confident in the new organisational structure and leadership we have in place,” the company told Kotaku.

Frazier’s walkout continues a string of high-profile departures at the publisher. The link between them, if any, has not been explained.

In March, EA’s second-in-command John Schappert departed from the company to join Zynga.

In April an unnamed EA Tiburon boss quit the company (very likely to be Ian Cummings, the Madden NFL creative director).

EA Easy Studio boss Ben Cousins, meanwhile, departed late in March – one day after Visceral Games boss Scot Amos resigned.

[shadowgrin]

In light of the Tiburon heads leaving EA...

can't say I'm pleased that Tiburon got the game though....I haven't been a fan of Madden since 2003. I'm confident that they will get the game playable...but if the NBA Live team couldn't make a "great" NBA game, and the NHL team failed miserably, it looks like the NFL studio is the last straw for NBA basketball games.

So much for Tiburon being the last straw of for EA's sim basketball title.

I'm assuming they can't take the crap anymore from EA higher-ups since they're being whipped to do both Madden (EA's sports moneymaker) and EA's sim basketball title.