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Electronic Arts closes Westwood Studios


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Electronic Arts closes Westwood Studios

Dateline: Thursday, January 30, 2003

By: TROY ROBERTS, Cinescape Online

As part of their quarterly earnings report, Electronic Arts announced that they will be consolidating its Los Angeles, Irvine and Las Vegas studios.

They plan to form a new studio a studio in Los Angeles soon, but with the report of the closure in Las Vegas, this means that Westwood Studios, responsible for the COMMAND AND CONQUER series and the recent EARTH AND BEYOND, is no more. This means significant layoffs at the Las Vegas studio (which employees over 100 people), although some are eligible to be transferred to the new LA studio or EA's main headquarters in Redwood Shores. Westwood's only confirmed member to be going to the Los Angeles studio right now is Louis Castle, the founder of the studio. The final day for Westwood employees will be this Friday.

Despite the closure of Westwood, EA has announced that they will continue to support the online RPG EARTH AND BEYOND and also that we haven't seen the last of the COMMAND AND CONQUER series.

The new Los Angeles studio will open later this summer and will be home to 200 developers.

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Uh-oh. I hope C&C: Generals doesn't require much support.

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Westwood always made good games IMHO,

Its' just another example of the big fish swallowing the little fish.

Eliminate your competition by usurpation and subjugation.

Personally I wouldn't touch an EA game, much less buy one.

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Guest Grayfox

... they shut down the vegas office??? nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

oooooooooooooooooo ooooooooooooo

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quote:

Personally I wouldn't touch an EA game, much less buy one.

Yeah, I received Nightfire for Xmas. How the hell can you screw up a James Bond game?

quote:

Westwood made the C&C series and was working on Generals.

Fortunately, I think C& C: Generals has gone gold. But I wouldn't count on a patch!

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quote:

Originally posted by Masefield:

Fortunately, I think C& C: Generals has gone gold. But I wouldn't count on a patch!

They said that we haven't seen the last of the Command & Conquer series. I'm guessing that they are gonna keep the CnC teams. After all, they are who made Westwood who they were. (Does that sentence make any sense? )

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"I forget which third-party developer" turned into Blizzard North, which created Warcraft III, IIRC.

Personally, I don't give a crap. I was a HUGE Maxis fan, and was skeptical when EA took over. But, the teams seemed to follow their old direction, and continued as they were. I've been a Westwood fan since Red Alert. I don't think the C&C series is in any trouble. The thing to worry about is EA turning into another Sierra; but so far, I'm guessing and hoping that that's not true.

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quote:

Personally, I don't give a crap. I was a HUGE Maxis fan, and was skeptical when EA took over. But, the teams seemed to follow their old direction, and continued as they were. I've been a Westwood fan since Red Alert. I don't think the C&C series is in any trouble. The thing to worry about is EA turning into another Sierra; but so far, I'm guessing and hoping that that's not true.


I agree with you, but EA is far away from being another company like sierra. They are the most powerful game publishers to date (i read somewhere that for every 4 games EA owned one), sierra isn't anywhere near that. Sierra is having internal problems, i don't remember EA having one.

At least Electronics Arts supports its games. Take a look at what sierra did to Empire Earth, that game was such a masterpiece but the developer team was kicked and sierra didn't support the game. And the last blow they got was a patch that did nothing but unbalance the game disguised in an expansion pack... EA is not that crazy

at least command & conquer will live.

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