This week, EA made the surprise announcement that it was shutting down one of its newest studios, Cliffhanger, and cancelling their in-development Black Panther game. Moving forward, EA says it will be slimming down its portfolio to focus on a few select franchises. 

Naturally, these franchises are all the big money makers – Battlefield, The Sims and Apex Legends. EA Entertainment president, Laura Miele, also added Skate to that list, so expect the revival of the skateboarding sports game to be full of cosmetic microtransactions. I have no doubt in my mind EA will be charging us for sneakers, board patterns, probably even wheels too.

While EA is looking to focus the bulk of its efforts on these franchises, IGN revealed that the company does still plan to support EA Motive's upcoming Iron Man game, as well as BioWare's new Mass Effect title and Respawn's next Star Wars: Jedi game.

If Mass Effect doesn't take off, BioWare could well be on the chopping block, as clearly, EA is reconsidering its single-player efforts. Last year EA also shut down Ridgeline Games, a new studio under EA founded to work on single-player Battlefield campaigns.

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KitGuru Says: EA finally seemed to be turning a corner on single-player games but that appears to have come to an abrupt end now, with two single-player focused studios closing down in back-to-back years. 

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