EA has revealed its third quarter earnings and it doesn’t look pretty, which is prompting the studio to expand its restructuring and cost-cutting efforts announced last year.

EA reported a third-quarter loss of $641 million, as compared to $33 million during the same period last year, while revenue rose to $1.65 billion compared to $1.5 billion in the third quarter last year, with $88 million in deferred revenue from EA’s online ventures.

Prompting the growth in revenue were bestsellers Fifa 09 with 7.8 million copies sold, followed by Need For Speed: Undercover, selling an unexpected 5.2 million copies. Additionally, Warhammer Online has 300 000 paying subscribers as of the end of the third quarter.

On the back of the enormous losses, EA has announced that employee redundancies will rise to 1 100, representing roughly 11 percent of the company, while 12 facilities are now set to close in light of EA’s recent performance. EA CEO John Riccitiello commented:

“Our holiday quarter came in below our expectations and we have significantly reduced our financial outlook for fiscal 2009, a clear disappointment.

“We delivered on game quality and innovation in calendar 2008, with 13 titles rated 80 or above—more than any third-party publisher. We expect to build on this great quality record in the year ahead while delivering more profitability.”

EA CFO Eric Brown remarked; “Given our recent performance and the current economic environment, we are aligning our cost structure with a lower projection of revenue, resulting in approximately $500m of operating expense reductions in fiscal 2010 as compared with our previous plans.”