Westwood will be no more, C&C Will live on!

Thursday 30th January, 2003 · 0 comments
Posted by Mats0174, .

Ea wants to move alot of studios into one big studio, this affects BOTH Westwood and EA pacific, unfortunately:

HomeLAN has more information on the closings of both Westwood Studios and EA Pacific as announced by Electronic Arts earlier today. EA's Vice-President of Corporate Communications Jeff Brown told HomeLAN this evening in a phone interview that the new consolidated Los Angeles EA studio (which currently handles the Medal of Honor series) will be the new development home for the Command and Conquer franchise. Most of the C&C: Generals team will be moved to the new LA studio and Brown said there are still plans for new C&C titles in the future.

For players of Westwood's massively multiplayer RPG Earth and Beyond, Brown told HomeLAN that the game's servers and support will be moved to EA's Redwood Shores, CA studios (where Motor City Online is based) in about a month after the closing of Westwood's Las Vegas offices. The transition should be seemless for players, according to Brown. Brown stated that Earth and Beyond's subscriber base is growing and that EA still plans to support the game.

The new LA studio will be moved into a new building this summer, according to Brown, and will have 200 employees at first but Brown told HomeLAN that EA plans to hire as many as 300 more people for the new EALA studio within the next year after the move.

And this followed:

EA has definite plans to continue supporting and creating new content for Earth & Beyond, despite the closure of the Westwood studio. The game's support staff will now be concentrated in Redwood Shores. While the fact that Westwood didn't have any new development projects was a major factor in the decision to close the studio, Brown confirmed that EA has "an active plan for more games in the Command & Conquer franchise." Westwood founder Louis Castle is the only member of the studio who was confirmed to be moving to Los Angeles, but other senior team members who have been deeply involved with the series are also expected to continue working on it in the new location. The last day for many Westwood employees will be this Friday, but a transitional staff will stay on until the studio's final closure on March 31.

Contrary to early reports, virtually the entire EA Pacific team, currently located in Irvine, California, will be continuing on and moving to the new Los Angeles campus. Earlier today, before the consolidation announcement, EA Pacific's Mark Skaggs told GameSpot that the studio has strong growth plans and has a couple projects lined up, including an expansion pack for Generals.

So that means that almost all EA Pacific dudes will stay, Westwood's staff is not confirmed at this moment, but C&C games will live on for sure!

Of course many will be mad about this news, but I've always been a C&C fan, and will always stay so. With reading all the reviews about Generals, I've seen that EA pacific did it right, and so EA made the right choice of separating them from Westwood, therefore I trust them on having that same right choice this time.