When they are such lazy, uncreative developers.

Because they own everything like M$ :D

They buyout the competition.

Yay, it's another nerd. Alright everyone, I'll handle this.

First off, EA has a million different divisions, the most notable of which is EA Sports. There are also divisions for different regions, such as EA Canada, but let's focus on EA Sports.

Last year, EA Sports alone announced and released over 60 games. They've already announced 54 games for 2007. And that's just EA Sports. What does that tell you?

They release the same crap over and over agian.
They buy out the competition.
They "publish" alot of games NOt make them.
They buy licences (NFL) 

1. The Sims.

2. Exclusive lincense rights with NFL and what not.

One time strokes of genius can fund years of laziness.

for being "lazy, uncreative developers." they have published at least 850 games since 1982, for roughly 34 games/year. Out of those games, they have all of thier sports games, with madden being insanely popular (and a monopoly on official NFL football). They also have some great games in the following

Battlefield 1942 (2002) Windows
Battlefield 2 (2005) Windows
Battlefield 2142 (2006) Windows

Burnout (2001) Gamecube, PS2, Xbox
Burnout 2: Point of Impact (2002) Gamecrube, PlayStation 2, Xbox
Burnout 3: Takedown (2004) PlayStation 2, Xbox

The Command & Conquer (all versions)

Half-Life 1 Anthology (2005) Windows
Half-Life 2 (2004) Xbox

Medal of Honor (1999) PlayStation

M.U.L.E. (1983) Atari 8-bit, Commodore 64

SimCity (1989) Numerous platforms
SimCity 2000 (1993) Numerous platforms
SimCity 3000 (1999) Macintosh, Windows
SimCity 3000 Unlimited (2000)Windows
SimCity 4 (2003) Windows

The Sims (2000) Gamecube, Linux, Macintosh, PlayStation 2, Windows, Xbox

The Godfather: The Game The Blackhand Edition (2007) Wii

Sure they repeat some of the games for multiple versions (burnout 1,2,3) or whatever, but all three of those were enjoyable games, and like most of the other games with sequals is different than the previous itteration (unlike the sports games, which really can't change much). They also have tons of different types of games.

Why start such a stupid waste of a thread, if you really wanted to know why they are so big, you could have just gone to wikipedia and looked at thier list of games and realized they are more than just Madden re-hashed every year.

Publishing is like taking credit for someone else doing 90% of the work.

American Sports games

E A SPORTS ... its in the game!