Electronic Arts has been seeing several departures in the past few months, with developers from PopCap Interactive, Criterion and recently with Chillingo as well. Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter recently spoke to VG247 about these departures, especially Chillingo since, “The Chillingo founders are really the glue that holds that organization together, so I think their departure is a big deal.

“I don’t know the Criterion guys well, but I would say that the departure of the two co-founders is less of a big deal, as they haven’t worked on any original IP since Black. They are really talented, but I think that the remaining crew is capable of backfilling.

“The Chillingo guys are a lot harder to replace than many of the others, since Chillingo is such a small team and had such a high success rate.

Pachter also gave his take on who would be next, naming EA Labels boss Frank Gibeau. “I don’t expect any high profile departures, other than Frank Gibeau. He was reassigned to a much less influential position and promptly sold all of his stock, so I think he is planning a move soon.”

On being asked whether COO Peter Moore would depart any time soon, Pachter said, “Peter is an old guy and has a lot of money, so he’s probably ready to stop working and start enjoying his life, but I would expect him to stick around a couple more years to help Andrew ease into the CEO role. They are close, and I think Peter has agreed to help mentor Andrew.”

It will certainly be interesting to see how EA proceeds in the coming months, especially since we’re only two months into the next console generation. Stay tuned for more updates in the coming months.

“In the last few months, we have started making changes to the business practices that gamers clearly don’t like. In the spring, we dropped our online pass program for consoles – both next-generation and current-generation. We listened to the feedback on SimCity and decided that The Sims 4 would be built as a single-player, offline experience. We announced some new intellectual properties at E3 and will unveil more new games in the months ahead.”

SimCity did sell two million copies though, and as Gibeau revealed, “the number of people logging in and playing is holding steady. SimCity is a success. However, underestimating demand in the first month was a major miss. We hope that the game and the service we’ve provided since then meets the fans’ high standards.”

The Sims 4 will reportedly be shown off at next month’s Gamescom, happening from August 21st to 25th.

Speaking to IGN, Gibeau stated that, “In the near future, the next wave of tablets and phones will have nearly Xbox 360 or PS3 capabilities in terms of graphics. Some of our engine technology that used to be console-specific now can, with modifications, be able to power games on tablets and on phones in the near future. We’re just getting ready for that.”

It won’t be easy though. “You have to redesign the game. You can’t just bring it over and have a virtual D-pad on the tablet. It doesn’t work. You have to re-architect it around touch, voice, camera. Our teams are having a lot of fun with that, re-imagining an experience on a tablet using the same graphics and assets in some ways, but completely remixing the meal. Same ingredients, completely different meal. That’s kind of the way we think about it.”

Given the upcoming Tegra 4’s power, which is almost roughly half that of the PS3 and Xbox 360, it’ll be interesting to see where the next generation of tablets goes.

Speaking to IGN, EA Labels president Frank Gibeau speaks about how, “Our goal in any product is to try and grow the audience. We’re definitely taking into account the opportunity to reach a bigger group of people. We think we’ve got the right story and accessibility that can do that.”

To that end, he described the new Mirror’s Edge as an “open-world action adventure game” and stated that the franchise has the chance to grow further. He also revealed that the first Mirror’s Edge was “not an art film” and that it managed to sell a few million units.

Mirror’s Edge is slated for next gen consoles and PC, and will release “when it’s done.”

“We had, frankly, too much capacity inside of our EA Partners team to handle more projects than we were in position to want to have right now. That was what was the scaling back of it was. But Partners is open for business,” stated Gibeau.

As for rumours that the program might be in danger of closing down, he stated that, “I don’t think the communication of that has been particularly well executed on our part.

“We are absolutely open for business to partner with developers out there. In fact on mobile, as an example, with our Chillingo team, we just published three games this week.

“On the console front, honestly, when you’re in a transition, you tend to focus in on your internal titles and put must of your attention there and most of your capital to make sure you get your studios positioned and configured for that. So we’re definitely looking to do that.”

EA Partners is a co-publishing arm of the giant which lends itself to publishing and distributing games from third party developers. This has included developers such Grasshopper Manufacture, Harmonix, Epic Games and Crytek. It will be showcasing Respawn Entertainment’s TitanFall this week at E3 2013.

Source: GamesIndustry International