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EA reorganizes for more efficiency


SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) — Electronic Arts said Friday it will reorganize the world's biggest video game publisher into four units, in an efficiency drive by its new chief executive.

Under the plan by CEO John Riccitiello, EA will consist of units that focus on sports, casual games, its Sims virtual dollhouse franchise, and other games.

EA said the changes, which will not involve job losses, should help it save money at a time when the cost of developing a top-tier game can run up to $20 million.

"It makes a lot of sense. It streamlines the company," said Todd Greenwald, an analyst with Nollenberger Capital Partners.

"It goes with Riccitiello's desire to make people more accountable. When a game misses a deadline, when the quality is bad, he wants one person to explain why," Greenwald said.

Riccitiello, the company's former chief operating officer who left in 2004 and rejoined in April, said last month that he intended to realign the company and improve its ability to act quickly.

"He's had a very strong and aggressive change agenda and what he's been framing as a challenge to the management team is that we are facing a market that is incredibly diverse and complex," said Frank Gibeau, head of the new EA Games unit.

The change "streamlines decision-making, increases speed to market, enhances accountability and allows us to be more experimental, so we can really open up and leverage our scale long-term", Gibeau said in an interview.

The changes, based on the success of a pilot program that placed games based on 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. Sims grew aggressively," Gibeau said.

Gibeau will be in charge of the largest unit of EA games, including its Battlefield series of online shooters, Need for Speed street-racing titles, and its Command & Conquer strategy games.

EA Sports, which includes the company's Madden football, Tiger Woods PGA Tour golf and NASCAR racing games, will be run by Executive Vice President Joel Linzner until a permanent head can be found.

Earlier this month, EA recruited Kathy Vrabeck, former head of publishing for rival Activision, to run its casual games unit. Such games, which are usually played online or on mobile phones, are a small but rapidly growing part of the industry.

Shares in EA were unchanged in extended trading after closing down 1.5% at $49.71 on Nasdaq.
Copyright 2007 Reuters Limited.

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Some interesting points there and what stuck out like a sore thumb to me more than anything was the obvious lack of a mention for UO.


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It said

...casual games .... which are usually played online or on mobile phones...

Can you say "Pogo.com"? I knew you could. :-) UO falls under "Other".

As for Mythic, when someone says "EA" they are actually saying "Electronic Arts / America Online / Time / Warner Brothers / Origin Systems / Bullfrog / Maxis / Mythic / Nullsoft / ETC." as they are pretty much one huge corporate alliance / takeover / buyout family.


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Well... we can't be under EASports, EATheSims, or EAPogo ... so we must be under "Gibeau will be in charge of the largest unit of EA games, including its Battlefield series of online shooters, Need for Speed street-racing titles, and its Command & Conquer strategy games."

I have an idea ... ask Emily Jeremy Dalberg! Miss Jeremy will probably just tell us "this will not affect the game we all love" and someone else will be a smartie and reply "I know this does not affect WoW, but how does it affect UO?"

Heh. But, yeah; no need for doom prophecy.

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I got a slightly different version of that email, and it didn't specifically mention any of the studios either, but if I'm reading it right we'll be under EA Games. I'm not aware of any particular impact this will have on the team - it's all pretty high-level.

E. Jeremy Dalberg
UO Community Coordinator
EA Mythic

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We weren't even mentioned...

I'm slightly offended.

It is striking that EA, with ALL of it's online subscriber failures, did not create an online division.

And, an outgrowth. Since they are gonna be distinct divisons, will we get our help and customer service done?