The hammer appears to be finally falling over at the Vancouver based EA Black Box dev studio. After published rumors a few weeks ago suggested that the Need For Speed studio would consolidate with Electronic Arts' other Vancouver based studio, Gamasutra is reporting through unnamed sources that EA has now let go of up to 200 people at Black Box.

That means the studio has less than half of its team left (it had had 350 people at last count). While it has developed other games for EA, the studio's big franchise was the Need For Speed racing series. The latest installment, Need For Speed Undercover, got slammed by critics and apparently was not a sales success. EA planned to reveal more details on its planned job cuts at its next scheduled quarterly financial results in early February.