The Collapse of Innovation

I was browsing my daily blogs when I came across this article on Joystiq.com. This is the latest round in what has become a huge set of lay-offs at EA.

First and foremost, let me express how sad I am to see so many people laid off like this, especially so close to the holidays and in the rough economy the US is in right now. Whether you like EA or not it is really sad to see the industry lose so many people at once.

On a slightly different note these turn of events at EA is very deflating for me. Over the past couple of years EA has really been striving to introduce new IPs and bring innovation to an industry that desperately needs it right now. Instead of embracing the new IPs and asking for more change it seems that the video game market truly does want "more of the same". Focusing on new IPs is always a big risk and with less than stellar sales on many of their games it looks like it didn't work out for EA and its partners.

At the end of the day EA has to look out for its bottom line (and investors) and sadly I wouldn't be surprised if 2010 brings us "safer" titles and much less risk in EA's game lineup. With Activision taking a similar approach we are left with an industry where the two top dogs are playing it safe, rather than sorry.

Where does this leave us as gamers? Chances are we're going to be buying lots of games next year with numbers hanging off the end instead of fresh IPs. While that's not automatically a bad thing, as someone who is dying for a fresh gaming experience it's pretty depressing that I'll more than likely not be getting that anytime soon.