Will Wright Leaves Electronic Arts
- Scribbled on April 8th, 2009 by Jonah Falcon
- Filed in Industry News
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that gaming god Will Wright is leaving Electronic Arts and stepping down as the head of Maxis, to focus on Stupid Fun Club, an entertainment think tank he founded in 2001.
This is a tremendous blow to Electronic Arts, since The Sims alone has sold 60 million units and brought a whopping $1B into EA’s coffers. Spore sold 2M copies as well. Considering EA’s income has decreased 60% over the course of a year, and its new original properties such as Mirror’s Edge and Dead Space had disappointing sales, it leaves EA Sports as the only steady source of income for the company.
This will have serious repurcussions at EA, since their best creative mind is gone, and one fears with the failed creative risks EA took in the last year, they’ll revert to safe, unchallenging titles. This also spells doom for Maxis, which while owned by EA is still a publicly traded company – Wright basically was Maxis. It is doubtful Maxis will survive without Wright.
We’ll follow this story as it happens.
April 8th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
Maxis is doomed I’d say, you’re right the company was Wright and vice-versa without him… EA I could care less what happens to them. They will have to figure out someway to begin making money agian, and soon.
I propose they start designing games people want to play.
April 12th, 2009 at 12:00 am
[...] Will Wright leaves EA [...]