It seems that all those rumors were again true. Some time ago many of us believed that EA would layoff a sizable group of its employees. Odd that today was the day they did it because it was also the day that they announced they had purchased Playfish for umpteen million dollars ($275M actually).

One has to wonder if it was 1500 marketing people because of the prior announcement that EA spends more on marketing than making a game. The ’Cost reduction Plan’ EA recently outlined will see 1,500 people left unemployed and will see the closure of several of its facilities. One can only hope it’s the people and facility that did the character modeling for FIFA 10.

They say it will be completed by March 31, 2010 (Merry Christmas everyone! or Happy Easter!) and will save them $100 million a year and lower restructuring by about $130 to $150 million. Hey, I was right, it was so they could buy Playfish $100M next year plus $150M savings, almost makes up the difference in one fell swoop.

Well at least the ire of all those people who hate EA is now duly justified. It’s six weeks to Christmas, do you know when your employment ends? If you’re 1500 people at EA, you do now.

We’re sorry of course to hear about the downsizing as it is never pleasant for people to be called ’redundant’ or to be ’downsized’ just so that a corporate giant, like EA, can save some cash instead of re-thinking their business goals. But on the bright side, there will be 1500 people available for hiring at all those great new indie developers that are springing up as the dinosaurs crumble under their own weight.