EA Canada

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EA Canada

Type of Company	Public
Founded	1999
Headquarters	Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada
Industry	Computer and video game industry
Employees	1,000+
Website	Homepage

EA Canada is a video game developer located in Burnaby, British Columbia, close to Vancouver. The development studio was opened by Jean Chrétien in January 1999 and is EA's largest studio. EA Canada alone employs more than one thousand people.

Inside the building there is: a motion-capture studio, twenty-two rooms for composing, fourteen video editing suites, three production studios and a wing for audio compositions. There are also facilities such as fitness rooms, theatre, a cafeteria called EAt, coffee bars and a video games room. The building is situated next to Discovery Park.

In March 2003, the firm decided that they lacked enough space for their current projects so the top four floors of an office tower in downtown were used for expansion. It was named "EA Black Box" (in fact, Black Box was a developer prior to EA's buy-out of the studio, which was contracted for the Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 title. It now currently has 5 of the 20 floors and is a separate EA studio named EAX).

EA Canada is a major studio of the American gaming software giant Electronic Arts or EA, which has several other non-American studios around the globe. EA, based in Redwood City, Cafifornia, had acquired EA Canada in 1991 for $11 million when this Canadian software firm was then known as Distinctive Software. At the time of the business acquisition, Distinctive Software was noted for developing a number of racing and sporting games published under the Accolade brand. Since becoming EA Canada, it developed many EA Games, EA Sports and EA Sports BIG games.