Pandemic Studios has been shut down

In some rather disheartening news, the company behind many great games such as Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction, Destroy All Humans!, and Star Wars Battlefront has been shut down.

An Electronic Arts memo confirms that Pandemic Studios was shut down today with a "core IP team" being moved to Electronic Arts' Los Angeles office.

Among those affected were the studio's top three employees: Andrew Goldman, formerly the studio's CEO; Josh Resnick, formerly the studios president; and Greg Borrud, vice president of product development.

"I want to make it clear that the Pandemic brand and franchises will live on," Nick Earl, EA Games Label Senior Vice President, wrote in the memo.

"In the months ahead, we will announce plans for new games based on Pandemic franchises. "This type of change can be difficult. But the situation calls for us to act decisively, to take control of our destiny and to run a stronger, more focused development operation. That's how we will continue to make great games in our LA studios."

11/18/09 Colton West

Dante's Inferno demo coming in December

For those of us awaiting Dante's descent into the dark inferno to wage war against Death itself, EA will be kind enough to give a peek at what to expect from this upcoming title.

The demo for Dante's Inferno will launch across both the Playstation Network and the Xbox Marketplace in December, the perfect way to warm ourselves during those harsh winter nights.

The demo is entitled "Gates of Hell" and will include the entire opening level of the game which will lead up to a battle with Death himself.

11/11/09 Colton West

Electronic Arts will cancel over a dozen unannounced projects

John Riccitiello, CEO of Electronic Arts announced during an investor's call yesterday that not only would they lay off 1,500 workers, but they will also be cutting over twelve unannounced projects in order to put priority upon sure fire properties.

"Electronic Arts has a core slate of games labels and sports franchises that we will iterate on an annual or bi-annual basis," he explained. "All of them are selling or have sold in their most recent edition 2 million units or more.

"After that, we've got the Sims and Hasbro, and frankly anything that doesn't measure up to looking like it can pencil out to be a very high profit contributor and high unit seller got cut from our title slate from this point going forward," he added.

"If you could array our titles slate up knowing what we did about what we would have otherwise brought to market, we cut the bottom third of it."

Riccitiello showed enthusiasm for the Dead Space and Spore franchises at DICE 2009 this past February, but didn't cast a hopeful glow on Mirror's Edge, saying the game underperformed financially, but added "we can learn from that and make it better."

11/10/09 Colton West