Armageddon continues, some rays of light seen, etc

Man, it's getting a little scary to open up a browser over my morning coffee, lest some of the blood drip off the screen any into my americano.

Raph had a post up about the VW Management Industry Forecast which was recently published. In it, there's a great quote from Meez' Sean Ryan on his company's goals for 2009:

"Get profitable while Armageddon rolls over the industry"

Apparently, we are seeing what that armageddon looks like.

• Lots of news about MS's announced cuts (5000 jobs, 1400 of which are from E&D, including the team running the GamerScore blog and Flight Sim team.)
• Sony's going to make cuts, including games division, but no specifics.
• EA lays off 150-200 at Black Box, and others at Mythic & Tiburon.
• Eidos closes a studio in Manchester.
• Sega trimmed a few folk.

Of course we aren't immune either, having announced some fab closures and associated headcount (not games-industry exactly, but it's tech related).

Meanwhile, Ubi announced some good news, with Shaun White doing well (I'm playing a ton of it. fun), Far Cry 2 coming on as a slow burner (yay Clint!) and Prince of Persia showing signs of the same, having moved 2.2M units (yay Ben!). They are hinting at growing which is brave to say the least, but the right thing to do if you have cash in the bank and think you can use this to get ahead of competition.

Oh, and Square lays of about several hundred players, perma-banning them from the FF MMO for exploiting a bug (hello? Isn't this half of what gaming is? Excise the bug, not your customers! Jeez!)