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It’s tough being a super hero. If you’re Dr. Doom and you’re feeling down, you can just blow something up. If you’re The Thing, well, all you can really do is look in a mirror and cry to yourself.

That was before Punch-Out!!, though, with a new ad (courtesy of Gamervision) popping up in comics showing two beefy brawlers finding a proper outlet for their stress. Oh, we really wouldn’t suggest playing with the Wiimote and Nunchuk, super guys. The game is way better with the classic controls.

[Via Kotaku]

Super heroes duke it out in Punch-Out!! originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 17 Jun 2009 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Last week Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello announced the company’s quarterly earnings conference call that they’d be going through developer layoffs and studio closures. While that was in plural, only the EA Chertsey studio in the UK was closed. Now, employees of the EA Chicago studio received news that the studio will be closed and most of them relocated.

You might know EA Chicago from games in the Def Jam and Fight Night franchises, and the already announced newly licensed Marvel fighting game, as well as a second fighting game based on a new intellectual property. The Fight Night series has already been moved to an EA Sports studio, and an EA representative said that announcements would be made regarding EA Chicago’s other projects in the future. But with the latest game in the Def Jam series titled Icon being received with bad critics like “weak fighting moves” and “inconsistent game mechanics” the series’ future seems uncertain or will at least be gone for a while.

Read the full “closing” memo from Frank Gibeau (the senior vice president of North American marketing):

“Today we are announcing the closure of our studio in Chicago. This is a difficult decision but we are convinced it’s the right thing to do for the future of the Games Label and EA.

Within the EA Games Label, we are committed to running each franchise and facility as a city/state, teams with unique creative identities as well as responsibility for product quality, ship dates and profitability. We recognize that games require large investments and extended development cycles. We’re willing to take risks, make long-term investments, and to support teams and individuals between launches. But each team is responsible for staying on a reasonable path to profitability. Sticking to that strategy is what gives us the financial resources and flexibility to take risks on new projects.

Unfortunately, EA Chicago hasn’t been able to meet that standard. The location has grown dramatically in the past three years while revenue from the games developed there has not. The number of employees has grown from 49 in 2004 to 146 people currently in the new facility in downtown Chicago. As it stands, EA Chicago has no expectation of hitting our profitability targets until FY2011 or later.
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