Said to be affected are EA's Tiburon and Black Box studios, located in Orlando, Florida and Burnaby, British Columbia, respectively. The Tiburon studio is responsible for EA Sports' Madden, NCAA Football and Tiger Woods PGA Tour franchises, as well as its upcoming mixed martial arts offering, EA Sports MMA. Black Box has been largely responsible for the publisher's Need For Speed and Skate series.

Both developers were previously affected by layoffs over the past year as part of a previously announced restructuring plan.

Also rumored to be affected are EA Redwood Shores' quality assurance team and Mythic Entertainment. Tweets from ex-staffers at those studios indicate "huge chunks" let go at the former, approximately 40% laid off at the latter.

Rumors of Electronic Arts' plans to cull staffers began circulating last week. The cutbacks appear to have been rolled out over the course of the past few days, ahead of EA's quarterly earnings report and alongside confirmation of the publisher's acquisition of Playfish, said to be a $300 million investment in the social gaming developer.

Those cuts extend to "hundreds" of EA employees and unspecified game projects, according to tipsters.

We've contacted Electronic Arts for confirmation on the cutbacks, but have not yet heard back.

Lucky for you, Skate 3 developer Black Box is aware of this challenge and dealt with it once before in Skate 2.

What Is It?
Skate 3 is the follow up to last year's non-Tony Hawk skater sim, Skate 2. The setting is new, the modes are somewhat familiar and the emphasis is on team gameplay this time instead of the solo experience.

What We Saw
EA sat games journalists down in groups for a quick rundown of all the new features plus a multi-round multiplayer face off in several different gameplay modes. The modes (as I frantically wrote them down between loading screens) were: Race, Domination, One-Up, Contest and Own-the-Lot.

How Far Along Is It?
Very early days. Skate 3 is built on Skate 2's engine, so everything looks farther along than it is and probably will move along quickly — but it was still what you'd call "alpha."

What Needs Improvement?
Race: It is so hard to get back on the right track once you've hosed yourself in a race. I was doing damn fine at the beginning, but when I messed up a jump by trying to flick my trick stick (read: right stick), I wound up facing the wrong way and the game reset me on the race track right back where I'd failed the trick with zero momentum to get up the vertical wall from which I was trying to do a trick jump. It ruined the pace of the race and of course put me in last place. (And no, I didn't mean for that to rhyme, it just came out that way.)

Skate.School: Sadly, EA wasn't ready to show off Skate.School — their tutorial mode. I put it here because it's really, really important that the developer nail the tutorials in Skate 3. So much of the gameplay rides on a team experience and there doesn't seem to be a space that's really all about solo skating except for the tutorial. Without a solid tutorial experience to catch everyone up, newcomers are going to be left in the dust (and totally demoralized when they realize they're the weak link) by their teammates.

Not Fundamentally Different: Some people griped that Skate 2 was really Skate 1.5. Those same people might be tempted to say that Skate 3 is really Skate 2 because when you get down to it, new tricks and new modes doesn't necessarily make a new game. The might even call Skate 3 Skate 1.75, if they're being particularly harsh.

What Should Stay The Same?
One-Up: Easily the most nerve-wracking mode of them all, One-Up also turned out to be the most fun. You and your posse start out at the beginning of a track while a rival posse watches from nearby. When the timer goes off, you have something like 60 seconds to rack up as many points as you can by doing tricks. If any one of you falls of his or her board, your time automatically expires and the other team gets to try and one-up your score on the course. It was really fun — especially when I realized that on one track, it was the experienced developer who fell down and cost us the match, not me. I was being smart and just doing kickflips in a corner.

Hall of Meat Defaults to Off: I loved Hall of Meat because I'm a bad skater so it feels good to see some kind of rewards system for totally wiping out on even the easiest jumps. But the developer told me that people (particularly people who didn't realize you could turn Hall of Meat slow-mo displays off) weren't too fond of it. So Black Box has separated Hall of Meat from the main gameplay and given players the option to pursue it or ignore it completely. I didn't get to see this because the revamped Hall of Meat isn't ready yet, but more details forthcoming.

Not Fundamentally Different: The first two games were really good and mostly accessible games. Skate 3 seems to meet those same benchmarks, so what's not to like?

Final Thoughts
Customization from the community was a huge part of Skate 2, but it's the absolute life blood of Skate 3. From dedicated posses who take on the entire community online to niche artists who get off on designing team logos for other players to use and even on to would-be filmmakers who capture some of the craziest stunts or recreate true machinima, Skate 3 is all about a multiplayer, community-driven experience. So if you want solo skating, I have a feeling you're going to be disappointed. But if you're still thrilled with Skate 2 and ready for more multiplayer, this is your game right here.

Not to sound ungrateful to EA Black Box for providing this thoughtful and theme-appropriate swag. I'm just terrified of skateboards, even ones without wheels. You ever read Calvin & Hobbes strips where Calvin's afraid of his bike? That's me with skateboards.

Luckily, Ümloud! is right around the corner, so I've got a place to send it straightaway. I already sent the bulk of my swag to the boss in Denver. And if nothing else, this skateboard should be a lot easier to carry on public transit in San Francisco than a 25 pound box of t-shirts.

Sure it cost them, but building a new franchise isn't cheap and at least some of their investments look like they will be paying off in the long run.

But what about the new titles that haven't yet hit the radar?

We've heard quite a bit about games that were in the works prior to Electronic Arts' dire financial announcements earlier this week. Keep in mind these are all rumored, unverified games, that come to us from trusted sources.

We're told that EA Tiburon, for instance, was working on a mixed martial arts game. While THQ has a licensing agreement with Ultimate Fighting Championship that doesn't expire until 2011, there are plenty of other ways to address the sport. And considering Tiburon's track record with sports games, it isn't hard to imagine that this game, if it survived the personnel and budget cuts, would be top notch.

On a more interesting front, at least to me, are the rumblings of what EA Blackbox was hard at work on leading up to the deep cuts that struck that studio. We're told that the studio behind the Need For Speed franchise and Skate 2 were neck deep in a new IP that was described to us as deeply creative and innovative. (Think Deep Space and Mirror's Edge) The most persistent rumor running the halls of Electronic Arts was that the game was going to be a third-person, run-and-gun action title with a very unexpected character and a very unexpected setting.

With the secret title pulling so much buzz at the publisher, we're hoping that it lands on its feet.

But even leading up to the news of the deeper cuts, not everything was rosey at Electronic Arts. We heard that despite the many denials, Steven Speilberg action title LMNO (pronounced Elemental) is dead in the water, the budget pulled, the assets locked away. Too bad, since we were hearing the game had landed Habib Zargarpour as art director.

It's a difficult time for everyone right now and maybe it makes sense for studios to pull back into their shells to weather the storm. Hopefully, though, we won't see a stop to what was becoming a renaissance of game design over at Electronic Arts.

I’m kind of skeptical about blending an action movie with a racing game. I know they keep making those Fast and the Furious films; but they kind of suck, so I don’t have an idea of what a good racing/action game would look like. Sort of like those Jesus Christ lizards – you wouldn’t know it was one until it walked on water.

Here’s what I did see: a Highway Battle, which was a flat-out high speed burn between two points on a freeway, trying to beat another guy to the endpoint. I also got to try a circuit race (which is exactly what it sounds like) and a driving job that seemed a lot like Grand Theft Auto only I never get out of the car.

Because this was such an early build, it was hard to see the full scope of the game as developer EA Black Box means for it to be seen. Graphics were missing, bugs were rampant, and the guy running my demo kept skipping the post-Highway Battle cutscene with Maggie Q. I guess if I wanted to actually see her, I would have had to go talk to her.

Best lines of the night:

“What do I have to do to get this cop to chase me? Kill his entire family?” – Dan Amrich, Official Xbox Magazine.

“Um. I think you’re going the wrong way.” –Randy Nelson, Joystiq.

“Where the #$%& is the red shell – I need a red shell!” –Me.

The bottom line for Undercover is the car is the star. The models are all very realistic, and in the garage mode, there’s none of this flashy background, topless model bullshit – it’s subdued lighting (like you’d see in real life) and black backgrounds so you can really focus on what a real Audi looks like and have a “more mature” driving experience.

So says Jesse Abney, associate producer on NFS: Undercover. Abney (who had to shout over the din at the hands-on party) told me that team was going for a sort of “visual signature” that you won’t see in any other Need for Speed title, or any other racing game for that matter. The heroic engine the team built for the project only enhances the realistic physics of the cars as damage models and movements are totally tweaked per car. So, in other words, it’d be way easier to wreck a Pinto than a Beamer plowing into a freeway barrier at 120 mph – like in real life.
But, says Abney, they still want this experience to be accessible to everyone. To that end, there’re all sorts of help for the noob – navigation arrows, mission info screens, etc. There’s also a 360 degree view of your car, for people who used to play old school racing games (a total first for the NFS series).

Need for Speed Undercover is out this November (18th-ish, we hear). Some details are yet to be hammered out (how many people in online multiplayer, what kind of downloadable content, if any, etc.), but after this first look I’ve got a better idea of what to expect from the game that’s trying so hard to be different.

Here, have some screen shots:

One of the first things you'll notice about the game is that it doesn't play, or look, like Activision's long-in-the-tooth Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series of games. There's less of a focus on massive combo stringing, complicated tricks, and the goal-defined level gameplay that Tony Hawk titles are known for.

With skate., the EA Black Box team has decided to focus on more fluid board control, greater realism and open-ended tasks. Players can choose to skate at their leisure around skate.'s photorealistic environments, mostly large public skate parks in the fictional city of San Vanelona, as well as take on tasks and challenges from other skaters and non-player characters populating the level. One such task was simply meeting a photographer's requirements: score 400 points and perform a rail slide from a heelflip. Fairly straightforward, but not altogether easy.

Why? The game's control scheme doesn't coddle you by using simple directional presses and button combinations. You'll have to work a little harder for those rail slides.

The controls are set up in a fashion familiar to anyone who's played an EA-published game (Fight Night Round 3, Def Jam ICON) recently. The left analog stick directs your player around the game world, the right stick controls your board. Using the trademarked "FlickIt" controls, a quick up-down motion with the right analog stick will kickflip your board. Move the analog stick in a J-motion, from top to down to left, and you'll pop shove-it. There are dozens of board moves that can be pulled off with simple gestures and they feel surprisingly effortless.

The rest of the controller is used for further body control. With the Xbox 360 controller, X and A perform left leg and right leg pushes, respectively, to gain speed. Right and left triggers will make your skater grab the board, depressing both will lay you down on the board for a coffin slide. Control feels natural, comfortable and refreshing in light of the white-knuckle button jamming you may be used to with Tony Hawk. What about the other buttons? B will act as a modifier for your tricks, with Y cycling through currently available tasks and challenges.

The skateboarding in skate. looks like mellow fun, and should give players an opportunity to cultivate their own style and suite of tricks.

One of the more interesting aspects of skate. is its planned use of the embedded video replay tool. The game will let players loop through the last 60 to 90 seconds of gameplay and record videos of memorable moments. Pull off an amazing set of tricks? Go into replay mode, edit out the fluff, pick your camera angles and save your video. EA will allow users to export these clips to your hard drive, then upload the fisheye lens-filtered videos to the skate. web site, letting other players rate and comment on your board skills. We were shown a preliminary version of the site, with movies uploaded on the fly, one that borrows heavily (and wisely) from YouTube.

The graphical style of skate. is gritty and realistic throughout, with real world brands like DC Shoes, Thrasher and Volcom driving home the realism. The HUD and overall design is rough and dirty, but thankfully features clear blue skies and realistic lighting. Expect in-game advertising to also add to the believability of the world. Graphically, the game looks fantastically realistic and you'll get a better impression of the visuals with the gallery below.

The most important aspect to nail with skate. has to be the controls. From my initial spins, the team seems to have done it. While more in-depth play will reveal just how usable the two stick control set up will be, it looks like they've got a worthy competitor to the Tony Hawk series of games. With the community aspect looking like a winner, skate. seems like it could be a solid new IP for Electronic Arts and may lure lapsed THPS players back the skateboarding genre. Michael McWhertor