Electronic Arts has announced that they'll be closing their Casual Label, and merging it with the Sims Label to form the new Sims and Casual Label, reports GamesIndustry.biz. The merging of the two labels comes after the recent departure of Kathy Vrabeck as president of EA Casual. Vrabeck, who joined EA after serving as president of publishing for EA's biggest competitor, Activision, cited only "personal reasons" for her departure."EA has learned a lot about casual entertainment in the past two years, and found that casual gaming defies a single genre and demographic," a statement from EA read. "With the departure of Kathy Vrabeck, EA is reorganizing to integrate casual games -- development and marketing -- into other divisions of our business. We are merging our Casual Studios, Hasbro partnership, and Casual marketing organization with The Sims Label to be a new Sims and Casual Label, where there is a deep compatibility in the product design, marketing and demographics."While it's not necessarily related, the reorganization of these labels comes during some tumult at EA, with the publisher recently cutting its fiscal 2009 earnings forecast and eliminating about 580 jobs from its workforce -- solid evidence that, despite some analysts' projections, the videogame industry is not entirely immune from the fallout of the slowing global economy, after all.
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