EA Games at Redwood Shores getting a new name

Electronic Arts has never exactly had the most exciting identities for its development studios. EA Tiburon and EA Los Angeles don't exactly have the same brand resonance with the public as Bungie or Infinity Ward. That's especially true for EA Redwood Shores, a city notable primarily for... housing the corporate headquarters of Electronic Arts.

There were some sign things are changing when EA bought Bioware and Pandemic and didn't change their names to EA Edmonton or (even worse) EA LA 2 . Now it turns out the country's biggest videogame publisher is starting to change the name of its internal studios too.

Last week I was interviewing Glenn Schofield, head of EA Redwood Shores, for an upcoming story about the company's attempts to develop new intellectual properties (such as "Dead Space," which Schofield executive produced). He talked about how much work is being done to establish Redwood Shores, both to gamers and potential employees, as a place known for creativity, originality, and high quality third person action adventure titles.

"That's why we're looking to brand the studio," he explained. "That's what I'm doing right now. It's going through legal."

No word on what the name will be. But I bet it will be much better than "a big floor at EA's corporate HQ."

Update (9/30): Apparently my post was a little confusing, which resulted in an incorrect "correction" over at Edge Online. I was right that the studio Glenn Schofield heads, located at EA Redwood Shores, is getting a new name. But there is still lots of stuff going on at EA's offices in Redwood Shores, from developers who work on "The Sims" to business folks, that isn't getting new brand name.

To specify: It's only the developers who work as part of the EA Games label in Redwood Shores, the guys and gals who made "Dead Space" and specialize in third person action adventure, who are getting a new studio brand. Formerly they were just lumped in with "EA Redwood Shores." But now they are getting their own distinct identity.

The Edge story made it sound like my entire post was incorrect. It's not. It was just a little unclear. Hopefully it isn't anymore.