Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Prior to Patrick visit, EA cuts more jobs

By Mass High Tech staff

The same day Gov. Deval Patrick touted video game development as a priority target for his West Coast tech recruiting tour, one of his stops — Electronic Arts Inc. of Redwood City, Calif. — added to its reported job cuts, with 1,100 positions now expected to be eliminated.

The gaming behemoth, known for such sports titles as the Madden NFL franchise and NBA Live, reported a $641 million net loss for its fiscal third quarter ending Dec. 31, 2007. That compares to EA’s loss of $33 million for the same period last year. EA had previously announced the job cuts, at the time planning on eliminating 1,000 jobs.

In a conference call yesterday, Gov. Patrick said he was promoting the Bay State’s strong video game development cluster while visiting tech companies on the West Coast. The regional gaming cluster already includes companies such as Turbine Inc., 2K Boston, Blue Fang Games LLC, Harmonix Music Systems Inc., Demiurge Studios, Tencent Holdings Limited, 38 Studios LLC, Mad Doc Software and Crate Entertainment.

“We have some greater depth (in the gaming sector) than I even realized until about a week ago in Massachusetts,” Patrick said.

EA’s titles through its various divisions, include the NCAA Football and Tiger Woods PGA Tour series, and outside of sports include the popular Sims series and Neverwinter Nights. The company lists no presence in New England.