SiliconBeat

The compensation committee at Electronic Arts is evidently not as confident about the companies near-term prospects as they were last year, judging by their decision March 18 to extend the performance period for some restricted stock awards it doled out to executives at the senior vice president level and above last May.

According to the original agreement, the awards were to vest in three equal amounts, with the vesting contingent on the company achieving “one of three progressively higher” net income targets, excluding some charges, that would be measured on a trailing four quarter basis sometime before June 30, 2011.

The committee has now extended that deadline by two years to 2013. No reason was offered for the change, but over the course of the past four quarters the company’s net loss ballooned to $1.14 billion, up from  a $385 million net loss in the comparable four quarters of the year before.

The electronic game maker retreated from its fiscal 2009 forecast back in December, when Chief Executive said the company was “taking steps to reduce our cost structure and improve the profitability of our business.”

In February, those steps included “reducing its workforce by approximately 11%, or 1,100 people, closing 12 facilities, narrowing its product portfolio and cutting other variable costs.”