Before you start reading please take note that the story has been updated below.

Independently, Black Box Studio was a great studio that produced many great games for one of the industry dominant publishers, EA – which is also a developer. There was a rumor going around that the company had plans to close Black Box Studios because they were having some financial problems.

Now, Black box Studio, responsible for the Need for Speed and the Skate franchises, has officially been given the boot. It was said that the games that EA released this holiday, like Mirrors Edge, Dead Space and Need of Speed, didn’t sell as well as they planned.

“Shutting down the studio is part of EA’s restructuring plan that hopes to save them US$ 120 million in annual costs. Part of the plan is to reduce their overall workforce by 10%, or 1,000 people.” said the press release. There was no word given on if the studios upcoming game Skate 2 has been affected.

[EA has officially closed Need for Speed Studio Black Box via Slice Gaming]

Updated: We had a chance to speak to an EA spokesperson and according to them, “Black box studios is not closed. It is going to relocate to [EA's] Burnaby facility in June 2009.”

According to GlobeAndMail, EA has decided to cancel the construction of their new gaming development studio in Vancouver, mainly because of slow holiday sales and the decline of the general economy.

“These are challenging times, they’re uncertain times for our industry and across the board,” EA spokesman Colin Macrae told The Globe and Mail. “We continue to be firmly rooted in Vancouver.”

The video game maker still operates two studios in the Vancouver area; the company’s Black Box studio is located in downtown Vancouver, while its sister studio EA Canada operates out of nearby Burnaby.

The new unnamed studio was to be housed in a 20,000-square-foot facility in the city’s Yaletown district, and would have provided the company with new development space to accommodate its Vancouver staff. Although planning for the new studio began about a year ago, Mr. Macrae said the company has already leased the space to a new tenant.