Ok, you've been lured into this rant ... but I would love to know this. I know EA, which gamers tend to hate yet somehow folks continue to support their shovelware crap, has the money to buy a lot of companies. However, by doing this, they are stiffling innovation and really, really hurting the gamers. What are they really, really planning to do? Do they just want to buy up everything - run a monopoly and churn out poor PS3 ports to piss gamers off, to end console exclusives and just make sequels to awesome games (Mass Effect) on a yearly basis?

Is there someone on the team willing to walk into EA headquarter and light it up like a Christmas tree?

I know this rant will fall on deaf ears, because we'll express anger and pull out our credit cards and buy their crap regardless. 

i wonder if they are gearing up to get some type of hardware out...this would give them a pretty good shot at exclusive games for something

^^ that would be insane if they pulled off a console. ITS not gonna happen but that would shake things up for next gen.

Because they can... the same goes for Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo... they will do what they can, when they can, for as long as they can... welcome to capitalysm baby :)

survival of the fittest, not?

 Which is totally possible, but highly unlikely.  Their deal with NFL states they HAVE to go multiplatform, so this wouldn't really help them unless they of course made the EA console the best version and cut features from the other consoles, which I doubt the NFL would allow.

The reason they're buying up companies is the same way MS did in the 90's.  To destroy inovation so they can continue to make easy money.  The real sad thing though, I'd rather see a MS monopoly than an EA monopoly.  EA has been really disgusting with its labour practices and it's not nearly as charitable as MS.  And I'm not a big MS fan. :/ 

^i dont know---they have given us a few good games....and it might fall into the niche of ---you foot the bill we get to put our name on it and get 51% of all profit made

@ El Duderino

Unfortunately, of all of the responses, yours is right on point. I remember how much I disliked them back in the day - they'd make a new Madden for the SNES, Sega Genesis ... and it would be same one from the year before. Dog ... I wish a company would own them and force them to get off their sorry butts and create new features and enhance gameplay (I'm talking about sports, but the same goes for Burnout and Need for Speed as well.)

It is simply them not having or unable to generate new ideas. Let me re-phrase that....new ideas that will make them money. So since they won't take risks on new IPs..... they want to buy up studios with successful franchises so they can make money from them with little to no effort from EA. That is the EA way.

EA`s destroying all the little developers