Electronic Arts is laying off a bunch of their employees acording the buzz on the net today. The third party game giant was once the industry leader based off their "EA sports" brand dominating the Playstation and X-box markets. The classic blunder of assuming the Wii was "just a fad" cost them the top spot in the industry when they severely under produced titles for the platform that turned out control almost half the console marketshare.

The following is from an E-mail written by Mythic Studios VP Rob Denton "Given this, John Riccitiello, our CEO, has tasked the company to get its costs in line with revenues ... Every studio, group and division of the company has been tasked to review its overall headcount and adjust its organization to meet the needs of the business moving forward." Translation: lay people off to reduce costs and get profitable again.

Mythic Studios you may know is the group making Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. Other game development groups which may be effected by this include Bioware, recently purchased by EA for a ridiculous sum and according to yesterdays news working on a new MMORPG. The Ultime Online group is probably their least profitable division and many of it's members were let go as of this morning. The rest of the UO group is being moved into the same studio as Mythic to cut back costs.